Ned Deily added the comment:

Python's platform module has both platform-independent and platform-dependent 
functions as noted in its documentation.  While it isn't as clearly documented 
as perhaps it should be, on most "Unix-y" platforms, like OS X, much of the 
platform-independent system information comes from the same source as the 
platform's "uname" command.  You can see that, if you use platform.uname(), it 
matches the output of OS X's uname(1) command:

>>> platform.uname()
('Darwin', 'kitt.local', '15.5.0', 'Darwin Kernel Version 15.5.0: Tue Apr 19 
18:36:36 PDT 2016; root:xnu-3248.50.21~8/RELEASE_X86_64', 'x86_64', 'i386')
>>> platform.system()
'Darwin'
>>> platform.release()
'15.5.0'

$ uname -a
Darwin kitt.local 15.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 15.5.0: Tue Apr 19 18:36:36 PDT 
2016; root:xnu-3248.50.21~8/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

Somewhat confusingly, "Darwin" is how the OS X kernel identifies itself and 
"15.5.0" is the Darwin version number that corresponds to OS X 10.11.5.  And 
the uname output is what the platform module uses.

For OS X, the platform module does provide a Mac-specific function, 
platform.mac_ver.  From it, you can get the OS X version information, rather 
than the Darwin kernel information.

>>> platform.mac_ver()
('10.11.5', ('', '', ''), 'x86_64')

Suggestions on how to improve the documentation are welcome!  But changing the 
results from the platform-independent functions after all these years is not 
likely to happen.

https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/platform.html#cross-platform
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)#Release_history

----------
nosy: +lemburg

_______________________________________
Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue27338>
_______________________________________
_______________________________________________
Python-bugs-list mailing list
Unsubscribe: 
https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com

Reply via email to