16.1 posix -- The most common POSIX system calls

Python 2.5

16.1 posix -- The most common POSIX system calls

Availability: Unix.

This module provides access to operating system functionality that is standardized by the C Standard and the POSIX standard (a thinly disguised Unix interface).

Do not import this module directly. Instead, import the module os, which provides a portable version of this interface. On Unix, the os module provides a superset of the posix interface. On non-Unix operating systems the posix module is not available, but a subset is always available through the os interface. Once os is imported, there is no performance penalty in using it instead of posix. In addition, os provides some additional functionality, such as automatically calling putenv() when an entry in os.environ is changed.

The descriptions below are very terse; refer to the corresponding Unix manual (or POSIX documentation) entry for more information. Arguments called path refer to a pathname given as a string.

Errors are reported as exceptions; the usual exceptions are given for type errors, while errors reported by the system calls raise error (a synonym for the standard exception OSError), described below.


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