14. 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:
os
Miscellaneous operating system interfaces.
time
Time access and conversions.
optparse
More convenient, flexible, and powerful command-line parsing library.
getopt
Portable parser for command line options; support both
short and long option names.
getpass
Portable reading of passwords and retrieval of the userid.
curses
An interface to the curses library, providing portable
terminal handling.
curses.ascii
Constants and set-membership functions for
ASCII characters.
curses.panel
A panel stack extension that adds depth to
curses windows.
platform
Retrieves as much platform identifying data as possible.
errno
Standard errno system symbols.
ctypes
A foreign function library for Python.
Release 2.5, documentation updated on 19th September, 2006.
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