how to find the owner of a file or directory in python

Question

I need a function or method in Python to find the owner of a file or directory.

The function should be like:

>>> find_owner(\"/home/somedir         


        

Answer 1

You want to use os.stat():

os.stat(path)
 Perform the equivalent of a stat() system call on the given path. 
 (This function follows symlinks; to stat a symlink use lstat().)

The return value is an object whose attributes correspond to the 
members of the stat structure, namely:

- st_mode - protection bits,
- st_ino - inode number,
- st_dev - device,
- st_nlink - number of hard links,
- st_uid - user id of owner,
- st_gid - group id of owner,
- st_size - size of file, in bytes,
- st_atime - time of most recent access,
- st_mtime - time of most recent content modification,
- st_ctime - platform dependent; time of most recent metadata 
             change on Unix, or the time of creation on Windows)

Example of usage to get owner UID:

from os import stat
stat(my_filename).st_uid

Note, however, that stat returns user id number (for example, 0 for root), not actual user name.