What is python's site-packages directory?

Question

The directory site-packages is mentioned in various Python related articles. What is it? How to use it?

Answer 1

site-packages is just the location where Python installs its modules.

No need to "find it", python knows where to find it by itself, this location is always part of the PYTHONPATH (sys.path).

Programmatically you can find it this way:

import sys
site_packages = next(p for p in sys.path if 'site-packages' in p)
print site_packages

'/Users/foo/.envs/env1/lib/python2.7/site-packages'