2.4 MacOS -- Access to Mac OS interpreter features

Availability: Macintosh.

This module provides access to MacOS specific functionality in the Python interpreter, such as how the interpreter eventloop functions and the like. Use with care.

Note the capitalization of the module name; this is a historical artifact.

runtimemodel

Always 'macho', from Python 2.4 on. In earlier versions of Python the value could also be 'ppc' for the classic Mac OS 8 runtime model or 'carbon' for the Mac OS 9 runtime model.

linkmodel

The way the interpreter has been linked. As extension modules may be incompatible between linking models, packages could use this information to give more decent error messages. The value is one of 'static' for a statically linked Python, 'framework' for Python in a Mac OS X framework, 'shared' for Python in a standard Unix shared library. Older Pythons could also have the value 'cfm' for Mac OS 9-compatible Python.

exception Error

This exception is raised on MacOS generated errors, either from functions in this module or from other mac-specific modules like the toolbox interfaces. The arguments are the integer error code (the OSErr value) and a textual description of the error code. Symbolic names for all known error codes are defined in the standard module macerrors.

GetErrorString(

errno)

Return the textual description of MacOS error code errno.

DebugStr(

message [, object])

On Mac OS X the string is simply printed to stderr (on older Mac OS systems more elaborate functionality was available), but it provides a convenient location to attach a breakpoint in a low-level debugger like gdb.

SysBeep(

)

Ring the bell.

GetTicks(

)

Get the number of clock ticks (1/60th of a second) since system boot.

GetCreatorAndType(

file)

Return the file creator and file type as two four-character strings. The file parameter can be a pathname or an FSSpec or FSRef object.

SetCreatorAndType(

file, creator, type)

Set the file creator and file type. The file parameter can be a pathname or an FSSpec or FSRef object. creator and type must be four character strings.

openrf(

name [, mode])

Open the resource fork of a file. Arguments are the same as for the built-in function open(). The object returned has file-like semantics, but it is not a Python file object, so there may be subtle differences.

WMAvailable(

)

Checks whether the current process has access to the window manager. The method will return False if the window manager is not available, for instance when running on Mac OS X Server or when logged in via ssh, or when the current interpreter is not running from a fullblown application bundle. A script runs from an application bundle either when it has been started with pythonw instead of python or when running as an applet.

---

Macintosh Library Modules

Previous: 2.3.1 IC Objects Up: 2. MacPython Modules Next: 2.5 macostools

---

Release 2.5, documentation updated on 19th September, 2006.