Is there a portable way to get the current username in Python?

Question

Is there a portable way to get the current user\'s username in Python (i.e., one that works under both Linux and Windows, at least). It would work like os.getuid

Answer 1

If you are needing this to get user's home dir, below could be considered as portable (win32 and linux at least), part of a standard library.

>>> os.path.expanduser('~')
'C:\\Documents and Settings\\johnsmith'

Also you could parse such string to get only last path component (ie. user name).

See: os.path.expanduser