Determining the operating system

The next script determines whether the code is running on Windows OS or the Linux platform. The platform.system() method informs us of the running operating system. Depending on the return value, we can see the ping command is different in Windows and Linux. Windows OS uses ping –n 1 to send one packet of the ICMP ECHO request, whereas Linux or another OS uses ping –c 1.

You can find the following code in the operating_system.py file in os module subfolder:

import os
import platform
operating_system = platform.system()
print operating_system
if (operating_system == "Windows"):
    ping_command = "ping -n 1 127.0.0.1"
elif (operating_system == "Linux"):
    ping_command = "ping -c 1 127.0.0.1"
else :
    ping_command = "ping -c 1 127.0.0.1"
print ping_command