16. Generic Operating System Services

The modules described in this chapter provide interfaces to operating system features that are available on (almost) all operating systems, such as files and a clock. The interfaces are generally modeled after the Unix or C interfaces, but they are available on most other systems as well. Here’s an overview:

• 16.1. os — Miscellaneous operating system interfaces
  • 16.1.1. File Names, Command Line Arguments, and Environment Variables
  • 16.1.2. Process Parameters
  • 16.1.3. File Object Creation
  • 16.1.4. File Descriptor Operations
    • 16.1.4.1. Querying the size of a terminal
    • 16.1.4.2. Inheritance of File Descriptors
  • 16.1.5. Files and Directories
    • 16.1.5.1. Linux extended attributes
  • 16.1.6. Process Management
  • 16.1.7. Interface to the scheduler
  • 16.1.8. Miscellaneous System Information
  • 16.1.9. Random numbers
• 16.2. io — Core tools for working with streams
  • 16.2.1. Overview
    • 16.2.1.1. Text I/O
    • 16.2.1.2. Binary I/O
    • 16.2.1.3. Raw I/O
  • 16.2.2. High-level Module Interface
    • 16.2.2.1. In-memory streams
  • 16.2.3. Class hierarchy
    • 16.2.3.1. I/O Base Classes
    • 16.2.3.2. Raw File I/O
    • 16.2.3.3. Buffered Streams
    • 16.2.3.4. Text I/O
  • 16.2.4. Performance
    • 16.2.4.1. Binary I/O
    • 16.2.4.2. Text I/O
    • 16.2.4.3. Multi-threading
    • 16.2.4.4. Reentrancy
• 16.3. time — Time access and conversions
  • 16.3.1. Functions
  • 16.3.2. Clock ID Constants
  • 16.3.3. Timezone Constants
• 16.4. argparse — Parser for command-line options, arguments and sub-commands
  • 16.4.1. Example
    • 16.4.1.1. Creating a parser
    • 16.4.1.2. Adding arguments
    • 16.4.1.3. Parsing arguments
  • 16.4.2. ArgumentParser objects
    • 16.4.2.1. prog
    • 16.4.2.2. usage
    • 16.4.2.3. description
    • 16.4.2.4. epilog
    • 16.4.2.5. parents
    • 16.4.2.6. formatter_class
    • 16.4.2.7. prefix_chars
    • 16.4.2.8. fromfile_prefix_chars
    • 16.4.2.9. argument_default
    • 16.4.2.10. allow_abbrev
    • 16.4.2.11. conflict_handler
    • 16.4.2.12. add_help
  • 16.4.3. The add_argument() method
    • 16.4.3.1. name or flags
    • 16.4.3.2. action
    • 16.4.3.3. nargs
    • 16.4.3.4. const
    • 16.4.3.5. default
    • 16.4.3.6. type
    • 16.4.3.7. choices
    • 16.4.3.8. required
    • 16.4.3.9. help
    • 16.4.3.10. metavar
    • 16.4.3.11. dest
    • 16.4.3.12. Action classes
  • 16.4.4. The parse_args() method
    • 16.4.4.1. Option value syntax
    • 16.4.4.2. Invalid arguments
    • 16.4.4.3. Arguments containing -
    • 16.4.4.4. Argument abbreviations (prefix matching)
    • 16.4.4.5. Beyond sys.argv
    • 16.4.4.6. The Namespace object
  • 16.4.5. Other utilities
    • 16.4.5.1. Sub-commands
    • 16.4.5.2. FileType objects
    • 16.4.5.3. Argument groups
    • 16.4.5.4. Mutual exclusion
    • 16.4.5.5. Parser defaults
    • 16.4.5.6. Printing help
    • 16.4.5.7. Partial parsing
    • 16.4.5.8. Customizing file parsing
    • 16.4.5.9. Exiting methods
  • 16.4.6. Upgrading optparse code
• 16.5. getopt — C-style parser for command line options
• 16.6. logging — Logging facility for Python
  • 16.6.1. Logger Objects
  • 16.6.2. Logging Levels
  • 16.6.3. Handler Objects
  • 16.6.4. Formatter Objects
  • 16.6.5. Filter Objects
  • 16.6.6. LogRecord Objects
  • 16.6.7. LogRecord attributes
  • 16.6.8. LoggerAdapter Objects
  • 16.6.9. Thread Safety
  • 16.6.10. Module-Level Functions
  • 16.6.11. Module-Level Attributes
  • 16.6.12. Integration with the warnings module
• 16.7. logging.config — Logging configuration
  • 16.7.1. Configuration functions
  • 16.7.2. Configuration dictionary schema
    • 16.7.2.1. Dictionary Schema Details
    • 16.7.2.2. Incremental Configuration
    • 16.7.2.3. Object connections
    • 16.7.2.4. User-defined objects
    • 16.7.2.5. Access to external objects
    • 16.7.2.6. Access to internal objects
    • 16.7.2.7. Import resolution and custom importers
  • 16.7.3. Configuration file format
• 16.8. logging.handlers — Logging handlers
  • 16.8.1. StreamHandler
  • 16.8.2. FileHandler
  • 16.8.3. NullHandler
  • 16.8.4. WatchedFileHandler
  • 16.8.5. BaseRotatingHandler
  • 16.8.6. RotatingFileHandler
  • 16.8.7. TimedRotatingFileHandler
  • 16.8.8. SocketHandler
  • 16.8.9. DatagramHandler
  • 16.8.10. SysLogHandler
  • 16.8.11. NTEventLogHandler
  • 16.8.12. SMTPHandler
  • 16.8.13. MemoryHandler
  • 16.8.14. HTTPHandler
  • 16.8.15. QueueHandler
  • 16.8.16. QueueListener
• 16.9. getpass — Portable password input
• 16.10. curses — Terminal handling for character-cell displays
  • 16.10.1. Functions
  • 16.10.2. Window Objects
  • 16.10.3. Constants
• 16.11. curses.textpad — Text input widget for curses programs
  • 16.11.1. Textbox objects
• 16.12. curses.ascii — Utilities for ASCII characters
• 16.13. curses.panel — A panel stack extension for curses
  • 16.13.1. Functions
  • 16.13.2. Panel Objects
• 16.14. platform — Access to underlying platform’s identifying data
  • 16.14.1. Cross Platform
  • 16.14.2. Java Platform
  • 16.14.3. Windows Platform
    • 16.14.3.1. Win95/98 specific
  • 16.14.4. Mac OS Platform
  • 16.14.5. Unix Platforms
• 16.15. errno — Standard errno system symbols
• 16.16. ctypes — A foreign function library for Python
  • 16.16.1. ctypes tutorial
    • 16.16.1.1. Loading dynamic link libraries
    • 16.16.1.2. Accessing functions from loaded dlls
    • 16.16.1.3. Calling functions
    • 16.16.1.4. Fundamental data types
    • 16.16.1.5. Calling functions, continued
    • 16.16.1.6. Calling functions with your own custom data types
    • 16.16.1.7. Specifying the required argument types (function prototypes)
    • 16.16.1.8. Return types
    • 16.16.1.9. Passing pointers (or: passing parameters by reference)
    • 16.16.1.10. Structures and unions
    • 16.16.1.11. Structure/union alignment and byte order
    • 16.16.1.12. Bit fields in structures and unions
    • 16.16.1.13. Arrays
    • 16.16.1.14. Pointers
    • 16.16.1.15. Type conversions
    • 16.16.1.16. Incomplete Types
    • 16.16.1.17. Callback functions
    • 16.16.1.18. Accessing values exported from dlls
    • 16.16.1.19. Surprises
    • 16.16.1.20. Variable-sized data types
  • 16.16.2. ctypes reference
    • 16.16.2.1. Finding shared libraries
    • 16.16.2.2. Loading shared libraries
    • 16.16.2.3. Foreign functions
    • 16.16.2.4. Function prototypes
    • 16.16.2.5. Utility functions
    • 16.16.2.6. Data types
    • 16.16.2.7. Fundamental data types
    • 16.16.2.8. Structured data types
    • 16.16.2.9. Arrays and pointers