8. Unix Specific Services

The modules described in this chapter provide interfaces to features that are unique to the Unix operating system, or in some cases to some or many variants of it. Here's an overview:

posix The most common POSIX<#20600#><#20600#> system calls (normally used via module os).
pwd The password database (getpwnam() and friends).
grp The group database (getgrnam() and friends).
crypt The crypt() function used to check Unix<#20879#><#20879#> passwords.
dl Call C functions in shared objects.
dbm The standard ``database'' interface, based on ndbm.
gdbm GNU's reinterpretation of dbm.
termios POSIX<#21241#><#21241#> style tty control.
TERMIOS Symbolic constants required to use the termios module.
tty Utility functions that perform common terminal control operations.
pty Pseudo-Terminal Handling for SGI and Linux.
fcntl The fcntl() and ioctl() system calls.
pipes A Python interface to Unix<#21642#><#21642#> shell pipelines.
posixfile A file-like object with support for locking.
resource An interface to provide resource usage information on the current process.
nis Interface to Sun's NIS (a.k.a. Yellow Pages) library.
syslog An interface to the Unix<#22306#><#22306#> syslog library routines.
commands Utility functions for running external commands.


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