Python get proper line ending

Evan Fosmark picture Evan Fosmark · Jan 18, 2009 · Viewed 58.7k times · Source

Is there an easy way to get the type of line ending that the current operating system uses?

Answer

dF. picture dF. · Jan 18, 2009

If you are operating on a file that you opened in text mode, then you are correct that line breaks all show up as '\n'. Otherwise, you are looking for os.linesep .

From http://docs.python.org/library/os.html:

os.linesep

The string used to separate (or, rather, terminate) lines on the current platform. This may be a single character, such as '\n' for POSIX, or multiple characters, for example, '\r\n' for Windows. Do not use os.linesep as a line terminator when writing files opened in text mode (the default); use a single '\n' instead, on all platforms.