How to access environment variable values
Environment variables are accessed through os.environ
import osprint(os.environ['HOME'])
Or you can see a list of all the environment variables using:
os.environ
As sometimes you might need to see a complete list!
# using get will return `None` if a key is not present rather than raise a `KeyError`print(os.environ.get('KEY_THAT_MIGHT_EXIST'))# os.getenv is equivalent, and can also give a default value instead of `None`print(os.getenv('KEY_THAT_MIGHT_EXIST', default_value))
The Python default installation location on Windows is C:\Python
. If you want to find out while running python you can do:
import sysprint(sys.prefix)
To check if the key exists (returns True
or False
)
'HOME' in os.environ
You can also use get()
when printing the key; useful if you want to use a default.
print(os.environ.get('HOME', '/home/username/'))
where /home/username/
is the default
The original question (first part) was "how to check environment variables in Python."
Here's how to check if $FOO is set:
try: os.environ["FOO"]except KeyError: print "Please set the environment variable FOO" sys.exit(1)