[Python-Dev] Reminder: last alphas next Wednesday 07-May-2008 (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Fri May 2 08:26:20 CEST 2008

Is there a reliable way to identify 32-bits and 64-bits Windows from within Python? I have not found any yet, but it might be a mere oversight on my behalf.

The reason I ask is that both return win32, which is most likely a reference to the API, even when having installed the 64 bits Python version. This, of course, by using win32 causes some issues with, for example, setuptools since it generate an egg with a win32 identifier. Now if you have Python C extension code it will be 64-bit compiled, thus not working on 32-bits Windows.

It seems you don't want to identify whether the Windows installation is a Win64 one, but whether the Python installation is, right?

For this, you should use platform.architecture()[0]

Regards, Martin

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