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How can I tell which python implementation I'm using?

Python has a few different implementations: CPython, Jython, PyPy, etc. I want to programmatically determine which implementation my code is running on. How can I do that?

To be specific, I'm looking for a function, say, get_implementation_name(), that could be used like so:

impl_name = get_implementation_name()
if impl_name == "CPython":
    print "I can abuse CPython implementation details. (I'm a bad, bad man.)"
elif impl_name == "PyPy":
    print "Can't count on reference-counting garbage collection here..."
else:
    print "I better be careful..."
Solution 
  • In [50]: import platform

In [52]: platform.python_implementation()
Out[52]: 'CPython'

    Docs: platform.python_implementation