8. Unix Specific Services
The modules described in this chapter provide interfaces to features
that are unique to the Unix operating system, or in some cases to
some or many variants of it. Here's an overview:
posix
The most common POSIX system calls (normally used
via module
os ).
pwd
The password database (
getpwnam() and friends).
grp
The group database (
getgrnam() and friends).
crypt
The
crypt() function used to check
Unix passwords.
dl
Call C functions in shared objects.
dbm
The standard ``database'' interface, based on ndbm.
gdbm
GNU's reinterpretation of dbm.
tty
Utility functions that perform common terminal control
operations.
pty
Pseudo-Terminal Handling for SGI and Linux.
fcntl
The
fcntl() and
ioctl() system calls.
pipes
A Python interface to
Unix shell pipelines.
posixfile
A file-like object with support for locking.
resource
An interface to provide resource usage information on
the current process.
nis
Interface to Sun's NIS (Yellow Pages) library.
syslog
An interface to the
Unix syslog library routines.
commands
Utility functions for running external commands.
Release 2.4.4, documentation updated on 18 October 2006.
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