Module misc

Expand the given environment variable content. If it contains other references to environment variables, they are expanded too.

Supported platforms are win32 and linux.

Example of use:

  >>> env_var_expand('$HOME')
  >>> '/home/phil'

Parameters:

• var_name (string) - environment variable

Returns: string

Raises:

• ValueError - if current system's platform is not windows or linux

Explode a list of values stored in an environment variable as a single string. On win32 the item separator is ';' and on other platforms it is ':'.

Example of use:

  >>> env_var_explode_list('$PATH')
  >>> ['/usr/bin','/bin']

Parameters:

• var_name (string) - environment variable
• default (string) - value to use if environment variable not found

Returns: list of strings

Convert CamelCase styled strings to lower_cased style.

Parameters:

• camel_string (string) - CamelStyled string to convert

Returns: string

Get the Linux process id of the given program name. Because multiple processes can exist, we return a list of the pids.

Returns: list of int

the list of running pids of given program name

Detect the Desktop environment used by the user. On windows this returns empty string. On other OSes we can currently detect gnome, kde and xfce.

Returns: str

the desktop name used (either gnome, kde or xfce)

Check whether functional tests should be run or not. This is done by checking whether the FUNCTIONAL_TESTS_STR environment variable is set to 'True'. If it is not explictly set to True, this method raises a twisted.trial.unittest.SkipTest (saying that the functional test is not run).

This method allows functional tests to have an easy way to check if they should be run. This simple example checks in the setup (but it could also be done inside the method itself):

   from elisa.core.utils.misc import run_functional_tests_check
   [...]
   class MyFunctionalTestCase(TestCase):

       def setUp(self):
           run_functional_tests_check()
           ...

Unserialise mappings from a string text. Mappings are lists of 2-uplets.

Example:

   key1 = value1
   key2 = value2a
   key2 = value2b

is deserialised into:

   [("key1", "value1"), ("key2", "value2a"), ("key2", "value2b")]

Takes a mappings and return a serialised form. Mappings are list of 2-uplets.

Example:

   [("key1", "value1"), ("key2", "value2a"), ("key2", "value2b")]

is serialised into:

   key1 = value1
   key2 = value2a
   key2 = value2b