Chapter 19. Operating System Services

THE MODULES IN THIS CHAPTER PROVIDE ACCESS to a wide variety of operating system services with an emphasis on files, process management, and the operating environment. A separate chapter on file management contains information on modules related to reading various kinds of file formats, and working with filenames.

A general familiarity with basic operating system concepts is assumed in this section. Furthermore, a number of modules provide advanced functionality, which is beyond the scope of this book to introduce, but is presented for readers who know what they’re doing.

Most of Python’s operating system modules are based on POSIX interfaces. POSIX is a standard that defines a core set of operating system ...

Get Python: Essential Reference, Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.