How to use the sys module in Python

Table of Contents

Motivation

Sometimes you need information about your system e.g. which Python version your program is running on.
Enter the sys module

Import

import sys

How to find the currently active Python interpreter

current_interpreter = sys.executable
assert current_interpreter == "/Users/jb/PycharmProjects/blog_content_creatronix/venv311/bin/python"

How find out about your Python version

sys.version

assert sys.version == "3.11.0rc1 (v3.11.0rc1:41cb07120b, Aug 5 2022, 11:44:46) [Clang 13.0.0 (clang-1300.0.29.30)]"

sys.version_info

With version_info ou can access the semantic version independently

assert str(sys.version_info) == "sys.version_info(major=3, minor=11, micro=0, releaselevel='candidate', serial=1)"
assert sys.version_info.major == 3
assert sys.version_info.minor == 11
assert sys.version_info.micro == 0

How to exit a program gracefully

sys.exit(0)

Which gives you

Process finished with exit code 0

Sometimes you want to abort a program when certain conditions are not met.
e.g. a folder does not exist in this case you can use a non-zero exit code to issue that the program did not successfully terminate