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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 as the keys of 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.