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6.1.6 Miscellaneous System Information

`confstr`( | name)

  Return string-valued system configuration values. name specifies the configuration value to retrieve; it may be a string which is the name of a defined system value; these names are specified in a number of standards (POSIX, Unix 95, Unix 98, and others). Some platforms define additional names as well. The names known to the host operating system are given in the `confstr_names` dictionary. For configuration variables not included in that mapping, passing an integer for name is also accepted. Availability: Macintosh, Unix.

  If the configuration value specified by name isn't defined, the empty string is returned.

  If name is a string and is not known, `ValueError` is raised. If a specific value for name is not supported by the host system, even if it is included in `confstr_names`, an `OSError` is raised with `errno.EINVAL` for the error number.

`confstr_names`
  Dictionary mapping names accepted by `confstr()` to the integer values defined for those names by the host operating system. This can be used to determine the set of names known to the system. Availability: Macintosh, Unix.

`getloadavg`( | )

  Return the number of processes in the system run queue averaged over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes or raises `OSError` if the load average was unobtainable.

  New in version 2.3.

`sysconf`( | name)

  Return integer-valued system configuration values. If the configuration value specified by name isn't defined, `-1` is returned. The comments regarding the name parameter for `confstr()` apply here as well; the dictionary that provides information on the known names is given by `sysconf_names`. Availability: Macintosh, Unix.

`sysconf_names`
  Dictionary mapping names accepted by `sysconf()` to the integer values defined for those names by the host operating system. This can be used to determine the set of names known to the system. Availability: Macintosh, Unix.

The follow data values are used to support path manipulation operations. These are defined for all platforms.

Higher-level operations on pathnames are defined in the `os.path` module.

`curdir`
  The constant string used by the operating system to refer to the current directory. For example: `'.'` for POSIX or `':'` for Mac OS 9. Also available via `os.path`.

`pardir`
  The constant string used by the operating system to refer to the parent directory. For example: `'..'` for POSIX or `'::'` for Mac OS 9. Also available via `os.path`.

`sep`
  The character used by the operating system to separate pathname components, for example, "`/`" for POSIX or "`:`" for Mac OS 9. Note that knowing this is not sufficient to be able to parse or concatenate pathnames -- use `os.path.split()` and `os.path.join()` -- but it is occasionally useful. Also available via `os.path`.

`altsep`
  An alternative character used by the operating system to separate pathname components, or `None` if only one separator character exists. This is set to "`/`" on Windows systems where `sep` is a backslash. Also available via `os.path`.

`extsep`
  The character which separates the base filename from the extension; for example, the "`.`" in os.py. Also available via `os.path`. New in version 2.2.

`pathsep`
  The character conventionally used by the operating system to separate search path components (as in PATH), such as "`:`" for POSIX or "`;`" for Windows. Also available via `os.path`.

`defpath`
  The default search path used by `exec*p*()` and `spawn*p*()` if the environment doesn't have a `'PATH'` key. Also available via `os.path`.

`linesep`
  The string used to separate (or, rather, terminate) lines on the current platform. This may be a single character, such as `'\ n'` for POSIX or `'\r'` for Mac OS, or multiple characters, for example, `'\r\n'` for Windows.

`devnull`
  The file path of the null device. For example: `'/dev/null'` for POSIX or `'Dev:Nul'` for Mac OS 9. Also available via `os.path`. New in version 2.4.