os.name under Win32

[Igor Kravtchenko]

Hi!

We have an application using Python that is intended to work both under
Win32 and Linux.
Since some parts of the code need to be different depending whether we
are under Win32
or Linux, we use the traditional:

if os.name == "posix":
some Linux code
else:
some Win32 code

However, we have noticed that under some circumstances, in some cases,
in some
computers under Windows XP Family that the "posix" code was executed causing
of course a crash.

My question is whether that is supposed to be totally impossible.
Under Win32, we are indeed supposed to have os.name = "nt". Is that value
hardcoded in Win32 binaries distribution themself? Can it potentially
change?

The purpose of this thread would be to have confirmed that under Win32,
os.name cannot never, ever be equal to "posix", whatever happens and so,
that we must have done some other mistakes elsewhere.

Thanks for any enlighting,

Igor.

[Martin v. Löwis]

Igor Kravtchenko schrieb:

My question is whether that is supposed to be totally impossible.
Under Win32, we are indeed supposed to have os.name = "nt". Is that value
hardcoded in Win32 binaries distribution themself? Can it potentially
change?

I can't test it right now, but I would expect that Cygwin Python
binaries on Win32 have os.name == "posix".

Regards,
Martin

[Steve Holden]

Martin v. Löwis wrote:

Igor Kravtchenko schrieb:

>>My question is whether that is supposed to be totally impossible.
Under Win32, we are indeed supposed to have os.name = "nt". Is that value
hardcoded in Win32 binaries distribution themself? Can it potentially
change?

I can't test it right now, but I would expect that Cygwin Python
binaries on Win32 have os.name == "posix".

That's correct.

regards
Steve
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