Python Pocket Reference, 3rd Edition

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Python Pocket Reference

times()

Returns a five-tuple containing elapsed CPU time infor-

mation for the calling process in floating-point seconds:

(user-time, system-time, child-user-time, child-system-

time

, elapsed-real-time). Also see the section “The time

Module,” later in this book.

tmpfile()

Returns a new file object opened in update mode ('w+').

The file has no directory entries associated with it and

will be automatically deleted once there are no file

descriptors for the file.

umask(mask)

Sets the numeric umask to mask and returns the prior

value.

uname()

Returns OS name tuple of strings: (systemname, nodename,

release, version, machine).

confstr(name)

confstr_names

sysconf(name)

sysconf_names

System configuration value access (see the Python

Library Reference for details).

File Descriptor Tools

The following functions process files by their descriptors (fd

is a file-descriptor integer). os module descriptor-based files

are meant for low-level file tasks and are not the same as

stdio file objects returned by the built-in open function

(though

os.fdopen and the file object fileno method convert

between the two). File objects, not descriptors, should nor-

mally be used for most file processing.

close(fd)

Closes file descriptor fd (not a file object).

The os System Module

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dup(fd)

Returns duplicate of file ...