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sys — System-specific parameters and
Python Runtime Services functions
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sysconfig — Provide access This module provides access to some variables used or maintained by the interpreter
to Python’s configuration
and to functions that interact strongly with the interpreter. It is always available.
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sys. abiflags
This Page On POSIX systems where Python was built with the standardconfigure script, this
Report a Bug
contains the ABI flags as specified by PEP 3149.
Show Source

Changed in version 3.8: Default flags became an empty string (m flag for pymalloc
has been removed).

New in version 3.2.

sys. addaudithook(hook)
Append the callable hook to the list of active auditing hooks for the current
interpreter.

When an auditing event is raised through the sys.audit() function, each hook will be
called in the order it was added with the event name and the tuple of arguments.
Native hooks added by PySys_AddAuditHook() are called first, followed by hooks
added in the current interpreter. Hooks can then log the event, raise an exception
to abort the operation, or terminate the process entirely.

C a l l i n g sys.addaudithook() will itself raise an auditing event named

sys.addaudithook with no arguments. If any existing hooks raise an exception
derived from RuntimeError , the new hook will not be added and the exception
suppressed. As a result, callers cannot assume that their hook has been added
unless they control all existing hooks.

See the audit events table for all events raised by CPython, and PEP 578 for the
original design discussion.

New in version 3.8.

Changed in version 3.8.1: Exceptions derived from Exception but not RuntimeError
are no longer suppressed.

CPython implementation detail: When tracing is enabled (see settrace() ), Python

hooks are only traced if the callable has a __cantrace__ member that is set to a
true value. Otherwise, trace functions will skip the hook.

sys. argv
The list of command line arguments passed to a Python script.argv[0] is the script
name (it is operating system dependent whether this is a full pathname or not). If
the command was executed using the -c command line option to the interpreter,
argv[0] is set to the string '-c' . If no script name was passed to the Python
interpreter, argv[0] is the empty string.

To loop over the standard input, or the list of files given on the command line, see
the fileinput module.

Note: On Unix, command line arguments are passed by bytes from OS.
Python decodes them with filesystem encoding and “surrogateescape” error
 handler. When you need original bytes, you can get it by [os.fsencode(arg) for arg
in sys.argv] .

sys. audit(event, *args)

Raise an auditing event and trigger any active auditing hooks.event is a string
identifying the event, and args may contain optional arguments with more
information about the event. The number and types of arguments for a given event
are considered a public and stable API and should not be modified between
releases.

For example, one auditing event is named os.chdir . This event has one argument
called path that will contain the requested new working directory.

sys.audit() will call the existing auditing hooks, passing the event name and
arguments, and will re-raise the first exception from any hook. In general, if an
exception is raised, it should not be handled and the process should be terminated
as quickly as possible. This allows hook implementations to decide how to
respond to particular events: they can merely log the event or abort the operation
by raising an exception.

Hooks are added using the sys.addaudithook() or PySys_AddAuditHook() functions.

The native equivalent of this function is PySys_Audit() . Using the native function is
preferred when possible.

See the audit events table for all events raised by CPython.

New in version 3.8.

sys. base_exec_prefix
Set during Python startup, beforesite.py is run, to the same value as exec_prefix . If
not running in a virtual environment, the values will stay the same; if site.py finds
that a virtual environment is in use, the values of prefix and exec_prefix will be
changed to point to the virtual environment, whereas base_prefix and
base_exec_prefix will remain pointing to the base Python installation (the one which
the virtual environment was created from).

New in version 3.3.

sys. base_prefix
Set during Python startup, beforesite.py is run, to the same value as prefix . If not
running in a virtual environment, the values will stay the same; if site.py finds that a
virtual environment is in use, the values of prefix and exec_prefix will be changed
to point to the virtual environment, whereas base_prefix and base_exec_prefix will
remain pointing to the base Python installation (the one which the virtual
environment was created from).

New in version 3.3.

sys. byteorder
An indicator of the native byte order. This will have the value 'big' on big-endian
(most-significant byte first) platforms, and 'little' on little-endian (least-significant
byte first) platforms.

sys. builtin_module_names
A tuple of strings giving the names of all modules that are compiled into this
Python interpreter. (This information is not available in any other way —
modules.keys() only lists the imported modules.)

sys. call_tracing(func, args)

Call func(*args) , while tracing is enabled. The tracing state is saved, and restored
 afterwards. This is intended to be called from a debugger from a checkpoint, to
recursively debug some other code.

sys. copyright
A string containing the copyright pertaining to the Python interpreter.

sys. _clear_type_cache()
Clear the internal type cache. The type cache is used to speed up attribute and
method lookups. Use the function only to drop unnecessary references during
reference leak debugging.

This function should be used for internal and specialized purposes only.

sys. _current_frames()
Return a dictionary mapping each thread’s identifier to the topmost stack frame
currently active in that thread at the time the function is called. Note that functions
in the traceback module can build the call stack given such a frame.

This is most useful for debugging deadlock: this function does not require the
deadlocked threads’ cooperation, and such threads’ call stacks are frozen for as
long as they remain deadlocked. The frame returned for a non-deadlocked thread
may bear no relationship to that thread’s current activity by the time calling code
examines the frame.

This function should be used for internal and specialized purposes only.

Raises an auditing event sys._current_frames with no arguments.

sys. breakpointhook()
This hook function is called by built-in breakpoint() . By default, it drops you into the
pdb debugger, but it can be set to any other function so that you can choose which
debugger gets used.

The signature of this function is dependent on what it calls. For example, the
default binding (e.g. pdb.set_trace() ) expects no arguments, but you might bind it to
a function that expects additional arguments (positional and/or keyword). The built-
i n breakpoint() function passes its *args and **kws straight through. Whatever
breakpointhooks() returns is returned from breakpoint() .

The default implementation first consults the environment variable

PYTHONBREAKPOINT . If that is set to "0" then this function returns immediately;
i.e. it is a no-op. If the environment variable is not set, or is set to the empty string,
pdb.set_trace() is called. Otherwise this variable should name a function to run,
using Python’s dotted-import nomenclature, e.g.
package.subpackage.module.function . In this case, package.subpackage.module
would be imported and the resulting module must have a callable named
function() . This is run, passing in *args and **kws , and whatever function() returns,
sys.breakpointhook() returns to the built-in breakpoint() function.

Note that if anything goes wrong while importing the callable named by
PYTHONBREAKPOINT , a RuntimeWarning is reported and the breakpoint is
ignored.

Also note that

if sys.breakpointhook() is overridden programmatically,
PYTHONBREAKPOINT is not consulted.

New in version 3.7.

sys. _debugmallocstats()
Print low-level information to stderr about the state of CPython’s memory allocator.

If Python is configured –with-pydebug, it also performs some expensive internal

 consistency checks.

New in version 3.3.

CPython implementation detail: This function is specific to CPython. The exact

output format is not defined here, and may change.

sys. dllhandle
Integer specifying the handle of the Python DLL.

Availability: Windows.

sys. displayhook(value)
If value is not None , this function prints repr(value) to sys.stdout , and saves value in
builtins._ . If repr(value) is not encodable to sys.stdout.encoding with sys.stdout.errors
error handler (which is probably 'strict' ), encode it to sys.stdout.encoding with
'backslashreplace' error handler.

sys.displayhook is called on the result of evaluating an expression entered in an

interactive Python session. The display of these values can be customized by
assigning another one-argument function to sys.displayhook .

Pseudo-code:

def displayhook(value):
if value is None:
return
# Set '_' to None to avoid recursion
builtins._ = None
text = repr(value)
try:
sys.stdout.write(text)
except UnicodeEncodeError:
bytes = text.encode(sys.stdout.encoding, 'backslashreplace')
if hasattr(sys.stdout, 'buffer'):
sys.stdout.buffer.write(bytes)
else:
text = bytes.decode(sys.stdout.encoding, 'strict')
sys.stdout.write(text)
sys.stdout.write("\n")
builtins._ = value

Changed in version 3.2: U s e 'backslashreplace' error handler on

UnicodeEncodeError .

sys. dont_write_bytecode
If this is true, Python won’t try to write.pyc files on the import of source modules.
This value is initially set to True or False depending on the -B command line option
and the PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE environment variable, but you can set it
yourself to control bytecode file generation.

sys. pycache_prefix
If this is set (not None ), Python will write bytecode-cache .pyc files to (and read
them from) a parallel directory tree rooted at this directory, rather than from
__pycache__ directories in the source code tree. Any __pycache__ directories in
the source code tree will be ignored and new .pyc files written within the pycache
prefix. Thus if you use compileall as a pre-build step, you must ensure you run it
with the same pycache prefix (if any) that you will use at runtime.

A relative path is interpreted relative to the current working directory.

This value is initially set based on the value of the-X pycache_prefix=PATH

command-line option or the PYTHONPYCACHEPREFIX environment variable
(command-line takes precedence). If neither are set, it is None .
 New in version 3.8.

sys. excepthook(type, value, traceback)

This function prints out a given traceback and exception tosys.stderr .

When an exception is raised and uncaught, the interpreter calls sys.excepthook

with three arguments, the exception class, exception instance, and a traceback
object. In an interactive session this happens just before control is returned to the
prompt; in a Python program this happens just before the program exits. The
handling of such top-level exceptions can be customized by assigning another
three-argument function to sys.excepthook .

Raise an auditing event sys.excepthook with arguments hook , type , value ,

traceback when an uncaught exception occurs. If no hook has been set, hook may
be None . If any hook raises an exception derived from RuntimeError the call to the
hook will be suppressed. Otherwise, the audit hook exception will be reported as
unraisable and sys.excepthook will be called.

See also: The sys.unraisablehook() function handles unraisable exceptions and

t h e threading.excepthook() function handles exception raised by
threading.Thread.run() .

sys. __breakpointhook__
sys. __displayhook__
sys. __excepthook__
sys. __unraisablehook__
These objects contain the original values of breakpointhook , displayhook ,
excepthook , and unraisablehook at the start of the program. They are saved so that
breakpointhook , displayhook and excepthook , unraisablehook can be restored in
case they happen to get replaced with broken or alternative objects.

New in version 3.7: __breakpointhook__

New in version 3.8: __unraisablehook__

sys. exc_info()
This function returns a tuple of three values that give information about the
exception that is currently being handled. The information returned is specific both
to the current thread and to the current stack frame. If the current stack frame is
not handling an exception, the information is taken from the calling stack frame, or
its caller, and so on until a stack frame is found that is handling an exception. Here,
“handling an exception” is defined as “executing an except clause.” For any stack
frame, only information about the exception being currently handled is accessible.

If no exception is being handled anywhere on the stack, a tuple containing three

None values is returned. Otherwise, the values returned are (type, value,
traceback) . Their meaning is: type gets the type of the exception being handled (a
subclass of BaseException ); value gets the exception instance (an instance of the
exception type); traceback gets a traceback object which encapsulates the call
stack at the point where the exception originally occurred.

sys. exec_prefix
A string giving the site-specific directory prefix where the platform-dependent
Python files are installed; by default, this is also '/usr/local' . This can be set at build
time with the --exec-prefix argument to the configure script. Specifically, all
configuration files (e.g. the pyconfig.h header file) are installed in the directory
exec_prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/config , and shared library modules are installed in
exec_prefix/lib/pythonX.Y/lib-dynload , where X.Y is the version number of Python,
for example 3.2 .
 Note: If a virtual environment is in effect, this value will be changed in site.py to
point to the virtual environment. The value for the Python installation will still be
available, via base_exec_prefix .

sys. executable
A string giving the absolute path of the executable binary for the Python
interpreter, on systems where this makes sense. If Python is unable to retrieve the
real path to its executable, sys.executable will be an empty string or None .

sys. exit([arg])
Exit from Python. This is implemented by raising the SystemExit exception, so
cleanup actions specified by finally clauses of try statements are honored, and it is
possible to intercept the exit attempt at an outer level.

The optional argument arg can be an integer giving the exit status (defaulting to
zero), or another type of object. If it is an integer, zero is considered “successful
termination” and any nonzero value is considered “abnormal termination” by shells
and the like. Most systems require it to be in the range 0–127, and produce
undefined results otherwise. Some systems have a convention for assigning
specific meanings to specific exit codes, but these are generally underdeveloped;
Unix programs generally use 2 for command line syntax errors and 1 for all other
kind of errors. If another type of object is passed, None is equivalent to passing
zero, and any other object is printed to stderr and results in an exit code of 1. In
particular, sys.exit("some error message") is a quick way to exit a program when an
error occurs.

Since exit() ultimately “only” raises an exception, it will only exit the process when
called from the main thread, and the exception is not intercepted.

Changed in version 3.6: If an error occurs in the cleanup after the Python
interpreter has caught SystemExit (such as an error flushing buffered data in the
standard streams), the exit status is changed to 120.

sys. flags
The named tuple flags exposes the status of command line flags. The attributes
are read only.

attribute flag
debug -d

inspect -i

interactive -i

isolated -I

optimize -O or -OO

dont_write_bytecode -B

no_user_site -s

no_site -S

ignore_environment -E

verbose -v

bytes_warning -b

quiet -q

hash_randomization -R

dev_mode -X dev (Python Development Mode)

utf8_mode -X utf8
 Changed in version 3.2: Added quiet attribute for the new -q flag.

New in version 3.2.3: The hash_randomization attribute.

Changed in version 3.3: Removed obsolete division_warning attribute.

Changed in version 3.4: Added isolated attribute for -I isolated flag.

Changed in version 3.7: Added the dev_mode attribute for the new Python
Development Mode and the utf8_mode attribute for the new -X utf8 flag.

sys. float_info
A named tuple holding information about the float type. It contains low level
information about the precision and internal representation. The values correspond
to the various floating-point constants defined in the standard header file float.h for
the ‘C’ programming language; see section 5.2.4.2.2 of the 1999 ISO/IEC C
standard [C99], ‘Characteristics of floating types’, for details.

attribute float.h macro explanation

difference between 1.0 and the least
value greater than 1.0 that is
epsilon DBL_EPSILON representable as a float

See also math.ulp() .

maximum number of decimal digits
dig DBL_DIG that can be faithfully represented in a
float; see below
float precision: the number of
mant_dig DBL_MANT_DIG base- radix digits in the significand of a
float
maximum representable positive finite
max DBL_MAX
float
maximum integer e such that radix**(e-
max_exp DBL_MAX_EXP
1) is a representable finite float

maximum integer e such that 10**e is

max_10_exp DBL_MAX_10_EXP in the range of representable finite
floats
minimum representable positive
normalized float
min DBL_MIN Use math.ulp(0.0) to get the smallest
positive denormalized representable
float.
minimum integer e such that radix**(e-
min_exp DBL_MIN_EXP
1) is a normalized float

minimum integer e such that 10**e is a

min_10_exp DBL_MIN_10_EXP
normalized float
radix FLT_RADIX radix of exponent representation
integer constant representing the
rounding mode used for arithmetic
operations. This reflects the value of
the system FLT_ROUNDS macro at
rounds FLT_ROUNDS
interpreter startup time. See section
5.2.4.2.2 of the C99 standard for an
explanation of the possible values and
their meanings.
 The attribute sys.float_info.dig needs further explanation. I f s is any string
representing a decimal number with at most sys.float_info.dig significant digits,
then converting s to a float and back again will recover a string representing the
same decimal value:

>>> import sys

>>> sys.float_info.dig
15
>>> s = '3.14159265358979' # decimal string with 15 significant digits
>>> format(float(s), '.15g') # convert to float and back -> same value
'3.14159265358979'

But for strings with more than sys.float_info.dig significant digits, this isn’t always
true:

>>> s = '9876543211234567' # 16 significant digits is too many!

>>> format(float(s), '.16g') # conversion changes value
'9876543211234568'

sys. float_repr_style
A string indicating how the repr() function behaves for floats. If the string has value
'short' then for a finite float x , repr(x) aims to produce a short string with the
property that float(repr(x)) == x . This is the usual behaviour in Python 3.1 and later.
Otherwise, float_repr_style has value 'legacy' and repr(x) behaves in the same way
as it did in versions of Python prior to 3.1.

New in version 3.1.

sys. getallocatedblocks()
Return the number of memory blocks currently allocated by the interpreter,
regardless of their size. This function is mainly useful for tracking and debugging
memory leaks. Because of the interpreter’s internal caches, the result can vary
from call to call; you may have to call _clear_type_cache() and gc.collect() to get
more predictable results.

If a Python build or implementation cannot reasonably compute this information,

getallocatedblocks() is allowed to return 0 instead.

New in version 3.4.

sys. getandroidapilevel()
Return the build time API version of Android as an integer.

Availability: Android.

New in version 3.7.

sys. getdefaultencoding()
Return the name of the current default string encoding used by the Unicode
implementation.

sys. getdlopenflags()
Return the current value of the flags that are used fordlopen() calls. Symbolic
names for the flag values can be found in the os module (RTLD_xxx constants,
e.g. os.RTLD_LAZY ).

Availability: Unix.

sys. getfilesystemencoding()
Return the name of the encoding used to convert between Unicode filenames and
bytes filenames. For best compatibility, str should be used for filenames in all
cases, although representing filenames as bytes is also supported. Functions
accepting or returning filenames should support either str or bytes and internally
 convert to the system’s preferred representation.

This encoding is always ASCII-compatible.

os.fsencode() and os.fsdecode() should be used to ensure that the correct encoding
and errors mode are used.

In the UTF-8 mode, the encoding is utf-8 on any platform.

On macOS, the encoding is 'utf-8'.
On Unix, the encoding is the locale encoding.
On Windows, the encoding may be'utf-8' or 'mbcs' , depending on user
configuration.
On Android, the encoding is 'utf-8'.
On VxWorks, the encoding is 'utf-8'.

Changed in version 3.2: getfilesystemencoding() result cannot be None anymore.

Changed in version 3.6: Windows is no longer guaranteed to return 'mbcs' . See

PEP 529 and _enablelegacywindowsfsencoding() for more information.

Changed in version 3.7: Return ‘utf-8’ in the UTF-8 mode.

sys. getfilesystemencodeerrors()
Return the name of the error mode used to convert between Unicode filenames
and bytes filenames. The encoding name is returned from getfilesystemencoding() .

os.fsencode() and os.fsdecode() should be used to ensure that the correct encoding
and errors mode are used.

New in version 3.6.

sys. getrefcount(object)
Return the reference count of theobject. The count returned is generally one
higher than you might expect, because it includes the (temporary) reference as an
argument to getrefcount() .

sys. getrecursionlimit()
Return the current value of the recursion limit, the maximum depth of the Python
interpreter stack. This limit prevents infinite recursion from causing an overflow of
the C stack and crashing Python. It can be set by setrecursionlimit() .

sys. getsizeof(object[, default])

Return the size of an object in bytes. The object can be any type of object. All
built-in objects will return correct results, but this does not have to hold true for
third-party extensions as it is implementation specific.

Only the memory consumption directly attributed to the object is accounted for, not
the memory consumption of objects it refers to.

If given, default will be returned if the object does not provide means to retrieve the
size. Otherwise a TypeError will be raised.

getsizeof() calls the object’s __sizeof__ method and adds an additional garbage
collector overhead if the object is managed by the garbage collector.

See recursive sizeof recipe for an example of using getsizeof() recursively to find
the size of containers and all their contents.

sys. getswitchinterval()
Return the interpreter’s “thread switch interval”; see setswitchinterval() .

New in version 3.2.

sys. _getframe([depth])
Return a frame object from the call stack. If optional integer depth is given, return
the frame object that many calls below the top of the stack. If that is deeper than
the call stack, ValueError is raised. The default for depth is zero, returning the
frame at the top of the call stack.

Raises an auditing event sys._getframe with no arguments.

CPython implementation detail: This function should be used for internal and
specialized purposes only. It is not guaranteed to exist in all implementations of
Python.

sys. getprofile()
Get the profiler function as set by setprofile() .

sys. gettrace()
Get the trace function as set by settrace() .

CPython implementation detail: The gettrace() function is intended only for

implementing debuggers, profilers, coverage tools and the like. Its behavior is part
of the implementation platform, rather than part of the language definition, and
thus may not be available in all Python implementations.

sys. getwindowsversion()
Return a named tuple describing the Windows version currently running. The
named elements are major, minor, build, platform, service_pack,
service_pack_minor, service_pack_major, suite_mask, product_type and
platform_version. service_pack contains a string, platform_version a 3-tuple and all
other values are integers. The components can also be accessed by name, so
sys.getwindowsversion()[0] is equivalent to sys.getwindowsversion().major . For
compatibility with prior versions, only the first 5 elements are retrievable by
indexing.

platform will be 2 (VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT) .

product_type may be one of the following values:

Constant Meaning
1 (VER_NT_WORKSTATION) The system is a workstation.
2 (VER_NT_DOMAIN_CONTROLLER) The system is a domain controller.
The system is a server, but not a
3 (VER_NT_SERVER)
domain controller.

This function wraps the Win32 GetVersionEx() function; see the Microsoft
documentation on OSVERSIONINFOEX() for more information about these fields.

platform_version returns the accurate major version, minor version and build
number of the current operating system, rather than the version that is being
emulated for the process. It is intended for use in logging rather than for feature
detection.

Availability: Windows.

Changed in version 3.2: Changed to a named tuple and added

service_pack_minor, service_pack_major, suite_mask, and product_type.

Changed in version 3.6: Added platform_version

sys. get_asyncgen_hooks()
Returns an asyncgen_hooks object, which is similar to a namedtuple of the form
 (firstiter, finalizer), where firstiter and finalizer are expected to be either None or
functions which take an asynchronous generator iterator as an argument, and are
used to schedule finalization of an asynchronous generator by an event loop.

New in version 3.6: See PEP 525 for more details.

Note: This function has been added on a provisional basis (seePEP 411 for
details.)

sys. get_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth()
Get the current coroutine origin tracking depth, as set by
set_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth() .

New in version 3.7.

Note: This function has been added on a provisional basis (seePEP 411 for
details.) Use it only for debugging purposes.

sys. hash_info
A named tuple giving parameters of the numeric hash implementation. For more
details about hashing of numeric types, see Hashing of numeric types.

attribute explanation
width width in bits used for hash values
modulus prime modulus P used for numeric hash scheme
inf hash value returned for a positive infinity
nan hash value returned for a nan
multiplier used for the imaginary part of a complex
imag
number
name of the algorithm for hashing of str, bytes, and
algorithm
memoryview
hash_bits internal output size of the hash algorithm
seed_bits size of the seed key of the hash algorithm

New in version 3.2.

Changed in version 3.4: Added algorithm, hash_bits and seed_bits

sys. hexversion
The version number encoded as a single integer. This is guaranteed to increase
with each version, including proper support for non-production releases. For
example, to test that the Python interpreter is at least version 1.5.2, use:

if sys.hexversion >= 0x010502F0:

# use some advanced feature
...
else:
# use an alternative implementation or warn the user
...

This is called hexversion since it only really looks meaningful when viewed as the
result of passing it to the built-in hex() function. The named tuple sys.version_info
may be used for a more human-friendly encoding of the same information.

More details of hexversion can be found at API and ABI Versioning.

sys. implementation
An object containing information about the implementation of the currently running
 Python interpreter. The following attributes are required to exist in all Python
implementations.

name is the implementation’s identifier, e.g. 'cpython' . The actual string is defined
by the Python implementation, but it is guaranteed to be lower case.

version is a named tuple, in the same format as sys.version_info . It represents the

version of the Python implementation. This has a distinct meaning from the specific
version of the Python language to which the currently running interpreter
conforms, which sys.version_info represents. For example, for PyPy 1.8
sys.implementation.version might be sys.version_info(1, 8, 0, 'final', 0) , whereas
sys.version_info would be sys.version_info(2, 7, 2, 'final', 0) . For CPython they are
the same value, since it is the reference implementation.

hexversion is the implementation version in hexadecimal format, like

sys.hexversion .

cache_tag is the tag used by the import machinery in the filenames of cached
modules. By convention, it would be a composite of the implementation’s name
and version, like 'cpython-33' . However, a Python implementation may use some
other value if appropriate. I f cache_tag is set to None , it indicates that module
caching should be disabled.

sys.implementation may contain additional attributes specific to the Python

implementation. These non-standard attributes must start with an underscore, and
are not described here. Regardless of its contents, sys.implementation will not
change during a run of the interpreter, nor between implementation versions. (It
may change between Python language versions, however.) See PEP 421 for more
information.

New in version 3.3.

Note: The addition of new required attributes must go through the normal PEP
process. See PEP 421 for more information.

sys. int_info
A named tuple that holds information about Python’s internal representation of
integers. The attributes are read only.

Attribute Explanation
number of bits held in each digit. Python integers
bits_per_digit are stored internally in base
2**int_info.bits_per_digit

sizeof_digit size in bytes of the C type used to represent a digit

New in version 3.1.

sys. __interactivehook__
When this attribute exists, its value is automatically called (with no arguments)
when the interpreter is launched in interactive mode. This is done after the
PYTHONSTARTUP file is read, so that you can set this hook there. The site module
sets this.

Raises an auditing event cpython.run_interactivehook with the hook object as the

argument when the hook is called on startup.

New in version 3.4.

sys. intern(string)
Enter string in the table of “interned” strings and return the interned string – which
 is string itself or a copy. Interning strings is useful to gain a little performance on
dictionary lookup – if the keys in a dictionary are interned, and the lookup key is
interned, the key comparisons (after hashing) can be done by a pointer compare
instead of a string compare. Normally, the names used in Python programs are
automatically interned, and the dictionaries used to hold module, class or instance
attributes have interned keys.

Interned strings are not immortal; you must keep a reference to the return value of
intern() around to benefit from it.

sys. is_finalizing()
Return True if the Python interpreter is shutting down, False otherwise.

New in version 3.5.

sys. last_type
sys. last_value
sys. last_traceback
These three variables are not always defined; they are set when an exception is
not handled and the interpreter prints an error message and a stack traceback.
Their intended use is to allow an interactive user to import a debugger module and
engage in post-mortem debugging without having to re-execute the command that
caused the error. (Typical use is import pdb; pdb.pm() to enter the post-mortem
debugger; see pdb module for more information.)

The meaning of the variables is the same as that of the return values from
exc_info() above.

sys. maxsize
An integer giving the maximum value a variable of typePy_ssize_t can take. It’s
usually 2**31 - 1 on a 32-bit platform and 2**63 - 1 on a 64-bit platform.

sys. maxunicode
An integer giving the value of the largest Unicode code point, i.e.1114111
( 0x10FFFF in hexadecimal).

Changed in version 3.3: Before PEP 393, sys.maxunicode used to be either 0xFFFF
o r 0x10FFFF , depending on the configuration option that specified whether
Unicode characters were stored as UCS-2 or UCS-4.

sys. meta_path
A list of meta path finder objects that have their find_spec() methods called to see
if one of the objects can find the module to be imported. The find_spec() method is
called with at least the absolute name of the module being imported. If the module
to be imported is contained in a package, then the parent package’s __path__
attribute is passed in as a second argument. The method returns a module spec,
or None if the module cannot be found.

See also:

importlib.abc.MetaPathFinder
The abstract base class defining the interface of finder objects on
meta_path .

importlib.machinery.ModuleSpec
The concrete class which find_spec() should return instances of.

Changed in version 3.4: Module specs were introduced in Python 3.4, by PEP 451.
Earlier versions of Python looked for a method called find_module() . This is still
called as a fallback if a meta_path entry doesn’t have a find_spec() method.
sys. modules
This is a dictionary that maps module names to modules which have already been
loaded. This can be manipulated to force reloading of modules and other tricks.
However, replacing the dictionary will not necessarily work as expected and
deleting essential items from the dictionary may cause Python to fail.

sys. path
A list of strings that specifies the search path for modules. Initialized from the
environment variable PYTHONPATH , plus an installation-dependent default.

As initialized upon program startup, the first item of this list,path[0] , is the directory
containing the script that was used to invoke the Python interpreter. If the script
directory is not available (e.g. if the interpreter is invoked interactively or if the
script is read from standard input), path[0] is the empty string, which directs Python
to search modules in the current directory first. Notice that the script directory is
inserted before the entries inserted as a result of PYTHONPATH .

A program is free to modify this list for its own purposes. Only strings and bytes
should be added to sys.path ; all other data types are ignored during import.

See also: Module site This describes how to use .pth files to extendsys.path .

sys. path_hooks
A list of callables that take a path argument to try to create afinder for the path. If
a finder can be created, it is to be returned by the callable, else raise ImportError .

Originally specified in PEP 302.

sys. path_importer_cache
A dictionary acting as a cache for finder objects. The keys are paths that have
been passed to sys.path_hooks and the values are the finders that are found. If a
path is a valid file system path but no finder is found on sys.path_hooks then None
is stored.

Originally specified in PEP 302.

Changed in version 3.3: None is stored instead of imp.NullImporter when no finder

is found.

sys. platform
This string contains a platform identifier that can be used to append platform-
specific components to sys.path , for instance.

For Unix systems, except on Linux and AIX, this is the lowercased OS name as
returned by uname -s with the first part of the version as returned by uname -r
appended, e.g. 'sunos5' or 'freebsd8' , at the time when Python was built. Unless
you want to test for a specific system version, it is therefore recommended to use
the following idiom:

if sys.platform.startswith('freebsd'):
# FreeBSD-specific code here...
elif sys.platform.startswith('linux'):
# Linux-specific code here...
elif sys.platform.startswith('aix'):
# AIX-specific code here...

For other systems, the values are:

System platform value

AIX 'aix'
 System platform value

Linux 'linux'

Windows 'win32'

Windows/Cygwin 'cygwin'

macOS 'darwin'

Changed in version 3.3: On Linux, sys.platform doesn’t contain the major version
anymore. It is always 'linux' , instead of 'linux2' or 'linux3' . Since older Python
versions include the version number, it is recommended to always use the
startswith idiom presented above.

Changed in version 3.8: On AIX, sys.platform doesn’t contain the major version
anymore. It is always 'aix' , instead of 'aix5' or 'aix7' . Since older Python versions
include the version number, it is recommended to always use the startswith idiom
presented above.

See also: os.name has a coarser granularity. os.uname() gives system-

dependent version information.

The platform module provides detailed checks for the system’s identity.

sys. platlibdir
Name of the platform-specific library directory. It is used to build the path of
standard library and the paths of installed extension modules.

It is equal to "lib" on most platforms. On Fedora and SuSE, it is equal to"lib64" on

64-bit platforms which gives the following sys.path paths (where X.Y is the Python
major.minor version):

/usr/lib64/pythonX.Y/ : Standard library (like os.py of the os module)

/usr/lib64/pythonX.Y/lib-dynload/ : C extension modules of the standard library
(like the errno module, the exact filename is platform specific)
/usr/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages/ (always use lib , not sys.platlibdir ): Third-party
modules
/usr/lib64/pythonX.Y/site-packages/ : C extension modules of third-party
packages

New in version 3.9.

sys. prefix
A string giving the site-specific directory prefix where the platform independent
Python files are installed; by default, this is the string '/usr/local' . This can be set at
build time with the --prefix argument to the configure script. The main collection of
Python library modules is installed in the directory prefix/lib/pythonX.Y while the
platform independent header files (all except pyconfig.h ) are stored in
prefix/include/pythonX.Y , where X.Y is the version number of Python, for example
3.2 .

Note: If a virtual environment is in effect, this value will be changed in site.py to

point to the virtual environment. The value for the Python installation will still be
available, via base_prefix .

sys. ps1
sys. ps2
Strings specifying the primary and secondary prompt of the interpreter. These are
only defined if the interpreter is in interactive mode. Their initial values in this case
are '>>> ' and '... ' . If a non-string object is assigned to either variable, its str() is re-
evaluated each time the interpreter prepares to read a new interactive command;
 this can be used to implement a dynamic prompt.

sys. setdlopenflags(n)
Set the flags used by the interpreter for dlopen() calls, such as when the interpreter
loads extension modules. Among other things, this will enable a lazy resolving of
symbols when importing a module, if called as sys.setdlopenflags(0) . To share
symbols across extension modules, call as sys.setdlopenflags(os.RTLD_GLOBAL) .
Symbolic names for the flag values can be found in the os module (RTLD_xxx
constants, e.g. os.RTLD_LAZY ).

Availability: Unix.

sys. setprofile(profilefunc)
Set the system’s profile function, which allows you to implement a Python source
code profiler in Python. See chapter The Python Profilers for more information on
the Python profiler. The system’s profile function is called similarly to the system’s
trace function (see settrace() ), but it is called with different events, for example it
isn’t called for each executed line of code (only on call and return, but the return
event is reported even when an exception has been set). The function is thread-
specific, but there is no way for the profiler to know about context switches
between threads, so it does not make sense to use this in the presence of multiple
threads. Also, its return value is not used, so it can simply return None . Error in the
profile function will cause itself unset.

Profile functions should have three arguments:frame, event, and arg. frame is the
current stack frame. event is a string: 'call' , 'return' , 'c_call' , 'c_return' , or
'c_exception' . arg depends on the event type.

Raises an auditing event sys.setprofile with no arguments.

The events have the following meaning:

'call'
A function is called (or some other code block entered). The profile function is
called; arg is None .

'return'
A function (or other code block) is about to return. The profile function is
called; arg is the value that will be returned, or None if the event is caused by
an exception being raised.

'c_call'
A C function is about to be called. This may be an extension function or a built-
in. arg is the C function object.

'c_return'
A C function has returned. arg is the C function object.

'c_exception'
A C function has raised an exception. arg is the C function object.

sys. setrecursionlimit(limit)
Set the maximum depth of the Python interpreter stack tolimit. This limit prevents
infinite recursion from causing an overflow of the C stack and crashing Python.

The highest possible limit is platform-dependent. A user may need to set the limit
higher when they have a program that requires deep recursion and a platform that
supports a higher limit. This should be done with care, because a too-high limit can
lead to a crash.

If the new limit is too low at the current recursion depth, aRecursionError exception
is raised.
 Changed in version 3.5.1: A RecursionError exception is now raised if the new limit
is too low at the current recursion depth.

sys. setswitchinterval(interval )
Set the interpreter’s thread switch interval (in seconds). This floating-point value
determines the ideal duration of the “timeslices” allocated to concurrently running
Python threads. Please note that the actual value can be higher, especially if long-
running internal functions or methods are used. Also, which thread becomes
scheduled at the end of the interval is the operating system’s decision. The
interpreter doesn’t have its own scheduler.

New in version 3.2.

sys. settrace(tracefunc)
Set the system’s trace function, which allows you to implement a Python source
code debugger in Python. The function is thread-specific; for a debugger to
support multiple threads, it must register a trace function using settrace() for each
thread being debugged or use threading.settrace() .

Trace functions should have three arguments: frame, event, and arg. frame is the
current stack frame. event is a string: 'call' , 'line' , 'return' , 'exception' or 'opcode' . arg
depends on the event type.

The trace function is invoked (with event set to 'call' ) whenever a new local scope
is entered; it should return a reference to a local trace function to be used for the
new scope, or None if the scope shouldn’t be traced.

The local trace function should return a reference to itself (or to another function
for further tracing in that scope), or None to turn off tracing in that scope.

If there is any error occurred in the trace function, it will be unset, just like
settrace(None) is called.

The events have the following meaning:

'call'
A function is called (or some other code block entered). The global trace
function is called; arg is None ; the return value specifies the local trace
function.

'line'
The interpreter is about to execute a new line of code or re-execute the
condition of a loop. The local trace function is called; arg is None ; the return
value specifies the new local trace function. See Objects/lnotab_notes.txt for a
detailed explanation of how this works. Per-line events may be disabled for a
frame by setting f_trace_lines to False on that frame.

'return'
A function (or other code block) is about to return. The local trace function is
called; arg is the value that will be returned, or None if the event is caused by
an exception being raised. The trace function’s return value is ignored.

'exception'
An exception has occurred. The local trace function is called; arg is a tuple
(exception, value, traceback) ; the return value specifies the new local trace
function.

'opcode'
The interpreter is about to execute a new opcode (seedis for opcode details).
The local trace function is called; arg is None ; the return value specifies the
new local trace function. Per-opcode events are not emitted by default: they
must be explicitly requested by setting f_trace_opcodes to True on the frame.
 Note that as an exception is propagated down the chain of callers, an'exception'
event is generated at each level.

For more fine-grained usage, it’s possible to set a trace function by assigning
frame.f_trace = tracefunc explicitly, rather than relying on it being set indirectly via
the return value from an already installed trace function. This is also required for
activating the trace function on the current frame, which settrace() doesn’t do. Note
that in order for this to work, a global tracing function must have been installed with
settrace() in order to enable the runtime tracing machinery, but it doesn’t need to
be the same tracing function (e.g. it could be a low overhead tracing function that
simply returns None to disable itself immediately on each frame).

For more information on code and frame objects, refer toThe standard type
hierarchy.

Raises an auditing event sys.settrace with no arguments.

CPython implementation detail: The settrace() function is intended only for

implementing debuggers, profilers, coverage tools and the like. Its behavior is part
of the implementation platform, rather than part of the language definition, and
thus may not be available in all Python implementations.

Changed in version 3.7: 'opcode' event type added; f_trace_lines and

f_trace_opcodes attributes added to frames

sys. set_asyncgen_hooks(firstiter, finalizer)

Accepts two optional keyword arguments which are callables that accept an
asynchronous generator iterator as an argument. The firstiter callable will be called
when an asynchronous generator is iterated for the first time. The finalizer will be
called when an asynchronous generator is about to be garbage collected.

Raises an auditing event sys.set_asyncgen_hooks_firstiter with no arguments.

Raises an auditing event sys.set_asyncgen_hooks_finalizer with no arguments.

Two auditing events are raised because the underlying API consists of two calls,
each of which must raise its own event.

New in version 3.6: See PEP 525 for more details, and for a reference example of
a finalizer method see the implementation of asyncio.Loop.shutdown_asyncgens in
Lib/asyncio/base_events.py

Note: This function has been added on a provisional basis (seePEP 411 for
details.)

sys. set_coroutine_origin_tracking_depth(depth)
Allows enabling or disabling coroutine origin tracking. When enabled, thecr_origin
attribute on coroutine objects will contain a tuple of (filename, line number, function
name) tuples describing the traceback where the coroutine object was created,
with the most recent call first. When disabled, cr_origin will be None.

To enable, pass a depth value greater than zero; this sets the number of frames
whose information will be captured. To disable, pass set depth to zero.

This setting is thread-specific.

New in version 3.7.

Note: This function has been added on a provisional basis (seePEP 411 for
details.) Use it only for debugging purposes.

sys. _enablelegacywindowsfsencoding()
 Changes the default filesystem encoding and errors mode to ‘mbcs’ and ‘replace’
respectively, for consistency with versions of Python prior to 3.6.

This is equivalent to defining the PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSFSENCODING

environment variable before launching Python.

Availability: Windows.

New in version 3.6: See PEP 529 for more details.

sys. stdin
sys. stdout
sys. stderr
File objects used by the interpreter for standard input, output and errors:

stdin is used for all interactive input (including calls to input() );

stdout is used for the output of print() and expression statements and for the
prompts of input() ;
The interpreter’s own prompts and its error messages go to stderr .

These streams are regular text files like those returned by the open() function.
Their parameters are chosen as follows:

The character encoding is platform-dependent. Non-Windows platforms use

the locale encoding (see locale.getpreferredencoding() ).

On Windows, UTF-8 is used for the console device.Non-character devices

such as disk files and pipes use the system locale encoding (i.e. the ANSI
codepage). Non-console character devices such as NUL (i.e. where isatty()
returns True ) use the value of the console input and output codepages at
startup, respectively for stdin and stdout/stderr. This defaults to the system
locale encoding if the process is not initially attached to a console.

The special behaviour of the console can be overridden by setting the

environment variable PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSSTDIO before starting
Python. In that case, the console codepages are used as for any other
character device.

Under all platforms, you can override the character encoding by setting the
PYTHONIOENCODING environment variable before starting Python or by
using the new -X utf8 command line option and PYTHONUTF8 environment
variable. However, for the Windows console, this only applies when
PYTHONLEGACYWINDOWSSTDIO is also set.
When interactive, the stdout stream is line-buffered. Otherwise, it is block-
buffered like regular text files. T h e stderr stream is line-buffered in both
cases. You can make both streams unbuffered by passing the -u command-
line option or setting the PYTHONUNBUFFERED environment variable.

Changed in version 3.9: Non-interactive stderr is now line-buffered instead of fully

buffered.

Note: To write or read binary data from/to the standard streams, use the
underlying binary buffer object. For example, to write bytes to stdout , use
sys.stdout.buffer.write(b'abc') .

However, if you are writing a library (and do not control in which context its code
will be executed), be aware that the standard streams may be replaced with file-
like objects like io.StringIO which do not support the buffer attribute.

sys. __stdin__
sys. __stdout__
sys. __stderr__
These objects contain the original values of stdin , stderr and stdout at the start of
the program. They are used during finalization, and could be useful to print to the
actual standard stream no matter if the sys.std* object has been redirected.

It can also be used to restore the actual files to known working file objects in case
they have been overwritten with a broken object. However, the preferred way to do
this is to explicitly save the previous stream before replacing it, and restore the
saved object.

Note: Under some conditions stdin , stdout and stderr as well as the original
values __stdin__ , __stdout__ and __stderr__ can be None . It is usually the case
for Windows GUI apps that aren’t connected to a console and Python apps
started with pythonw.

sys. thread_info
A named tuple holding information about the thread implementation.

Attribute Explanation
Name of the thread implementation:

'nt' : Windows threads

name
'pthread' : POSIX threads
'solaris' : Solaris threads

Name of the lock implementation:

'semaphore' : a lock uses a semaphore

lock 'mutex+cond' : a lock uses a mutex and a
condition variable
None if this information is unknown

Name and version of the thread library. It is a string, or

version
None if this information is unknown.

New in version 3.3.

sys. tracebacklimit
When this variable is set to an integer value, it determines the maximum number
of levels of traceback information printed when an unhandled exception occurs.
The default is 1000 . When set to 0 or less, all traceback information is suppressed
and only the exception type and value are printed.

sys. unraisablehook(unraisable, /)
Handle an unraisable exception.

Called when an exception has occurred but there is no way for Python to handle it.
For example, when a destructor raises an exception or during garbage collection
( gc.collect() ).

The unraisable argument has the following attributes:

exc_type: Exception type.

exc_value: Exception value, can be None .
exc_traceback: Exception traceback, can be None .
err_msg: Error message, can be None .
object: Object causing the exception, can be None .

The default hook formats err_msg and object as: f'{err_msg}: {object!r}' ; use
“Exception ignored in” error message if err_msg is None .
 sys.unraisablehook() can be overridden to control how unraisable exceptions are
handled.

Storing exc_value using a custom hook can create a reference cycle. It should be
cleared explicitly to break the reference cycle when the exception is no longer
needed.

Storing object using a custom hook can resurrect it if it is set to an object which is
being finalized. Avoid storing object after the custom hook completes to avoid
resurrecting objects.

See also excepthook() which handles uncaught exceptions.

Raise an auditing event sys.unraisablehook with arguments hook , unraisable when

an exception that cannot be handled occurs. The unraisable object is the same as
what will be passed to the hook. If no hook has been set, hook may be None .

New in version 3.8.

sys. version
A string containing the version number of the Python interpreter plus additional
information on the build number and compiler used. This string is displayed when
the interactive interpreter is started. Do not extract version information out of it,
rather, use version_info and the functions provided by the platform module.

sys. api_version
The C API version for this interpreter. Programmers may find this useful when
debugging version conflicts between Python and extension modules.

sys. version_info
A tuple containing the five components of the version number: major, minor, micro,
releaselevel, and serial. All values except releaselevel are integers; the release
level is 'alpha' , 'beta' , 'candidate' , or 'final' . The version_info value corresponding to
the Python version 2.0 is (2, 0, 0, 'final', 0) . The components can also be accessed
by name, so sys.version_info[0] is equivalent to sys.version_info.major and so on.

Changed in version 3.1: Added named component attributes.

sys. warnoptions
This is an implementation detail of the warnings framework; do not modify this
value. Refer to the warnings module for more information on the warnings
framework.

sys. winver
The version number used to form registry keys on Windows platforms. This is
stored as string resource 1000 in the Python DLL.The value is normally the first
three characters of version . It is provided in the sys module for informational
purposes; modifying this value has no effect on the registry keys used by Python.

Availability: Windows.

sys. _xoptions
A dictionary of the various implementation-specific flags passed through the -X
command-line option. Option names are either mapped to their values, if given
explicitly, or to True . Example:
 $ ./python -Xa=b -Xc
Python 3.2a3+ (py3k, Oct 16 2010, 20:14:50)
[GCC 4.4.3] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import sys
>>> sys._xoptions
{'a': 'b', 'c': True}
CPython implementation detail: This is a CPython-specific way of accessing
options passed through -X . Other implementations may export them through other
means, or not at all.

New in version 3.2.

Citations

[C99]ISO/IEC 9899:1999. “Programming languages – C.” A public draft of this standard

is available at http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf.

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