6. 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 modelled after the Unix or C interfaces, but they are available on most other systems as well. Here's an overview:

os	Miscellaneous OS interfaces.
os.path	Common pathname manipulations.
dircache	Return directory listing, with cache mechanism.
stat	Utilities for interpreting the results of os.stat(), os.lstat() and os.fstat().
statcache	Stat files, and remember results.
statvfs	Constants for interpreting the result of os.statvfs().
cmp	Compare files very efficiently.
cmpcache	Compare files very efficiently.
time	Time access and conversions.
sched	General purpose event scheduler.
getpass	Portable reading of passwords and retrieval of the userid.
curses	An interface to the curses library.
getopt	Parser for command line options.
tempfile	Generate temporary file names.
errno	Standard errno system symbols.
glob	Unix shell style pathname pattern expansion.
fnmatch	Unix shell style filename pattern matching.
shutil	High-level file operations, including copying.
locale	Internationalization services.
mutex	Lock and queue for mutual exclusion.