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

cpython, python

Solution

In [50]: import platform

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

Docs: platform.python_implementation

Problem

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..." ```

Original source