If you want to find out what's going on around you in a Python program, you can uses your system's environment variables via the os.environ module - the keys() method telling you which environment variables are available to you. There's an example
[here] from our
Python Programming training course.
Python is also effected in how it runs by a number of specific environment variables, allowing you to control where it looks to load modules and how deeply it optimise's the compiled code, for example. There's a list of all of those (except the series provided for debugging of the Python language itself) at the end of the example above.
(written 2010-02-28, updated 2010-03-03)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
Y115 - Additional Python Facilities [183] The elegance of Python - (2005-01-19)
[208] Examples - Gadfly, NI Number, and Tcl to C interface - (2005-02-10)
[239] What and why for the epoch - (2005-03-08)
[463] Splitting the difference - (2005-10-13)
[663] Python to MySQL - (2006-03-31)
[672] Keeping your regular expressions simple - (2006-04-05)
[753] Python 3000 - the next generation - (2006-06-09)
[901] Python - listing out the contents of all variables - (2006-10-21)
[1043] Sending an email from Python - (2007-01-18)
[1136] Buffering output - why it is done and issues raised in Tcl, Perl, Python and PHP - (2007-04-06)
[1149] Turning objects into something you can store - Pickling (Python) - (2007-04-15)
[1305] Regular expressions made easy - building from components - (2007-08-16)
[1336] Ignore case in Regular Expression - (2007-09-08)
[1337] A series of tyre damages - (2007-09-08)
[1876] Python Regular Expressions - (2008-11-08)
[2407] Testing code in Python - doctest, unittest and others - (2009-09-16)
[2435] Serialization - storing and reloading objects - (2009-10-04)
[2462] Python - how it saves on compile time - (2009-10-20)
[2721] Regular Expressions in Python - (2010-04-14)
[2745] Connecting Python to sqlite and MySQL databases - (2010-04-28)
[2746] Model - View - Controller demo, Sqlite - Python 3 - Qt4 - (2010-04-29)
[2764] Python decorators - your own, staticmethod and classmethod - (2010-05-14)
[2765] Running operating system commands from your Python program - (2010-05-14)
[2786] Factory methods and SqLite in use in a Python teaching example - (2010-05-29)
[2790] Joining a MySQL table from within a Python program - (2010-06-02)
[3089] Python regular expressions - repeating, splitting, lookahead and lookbehind - (2010-12-17)
[3442] A demonstration of how many Python facilities work together - (2011-09-16)
[3469] Teaching dilemma - old tricks and techniques, or recent enhancements? - (2011-10-08)
[4085] JSON from Python - first principles, easy example - (2013-05-13)
[4211] Handling JSON in Python (and a csv, marshall and pickle comparison) - (2013-11-16)
[4298] Python - an interesting application - (2014-09-18)
[4439] Json is the new marshall, pickle and cPickle / Python - (2015-02-22)
[4451] Running an operating system command from your Python program - the new way with the subprocess module - (2015-03-06)
[4536] Json load from URL, recursive display, Python 3.4 - (2015-10-14)
[4593] Command line parameter handling in Python via the argparse module - (2015-12-08)
[4709] Some gems from Intermediate Python - (2016-10-30)
Some other Articles
New numbers, as 01225 707126 and 01225 709638 are being retiredSave the Train - a significant change in approachWant to do a big batch edit? Nothing beats Perl!Melksham CarnivalPython - what is going on around me?Java - from applets to servlets. JSPs and moreJava Server Pages - putting it all togetherReading and writing cookies in Java Servlets and JSPsCalculation within objects - early, last minute, or cached?Getting a phone line changed ...