How Do I Access and Handle Environment Variables in Python?

Obtaining Environment Variables in Python

Accessing environment variables is crucial for customizing and controlling script behavior. Python offers straightforward methods to retrieve these variables using the os module's os.environ attribute.

To get the value of an environment variable, simply access it through os.environ['VARIABLE_NAME'] syntax. For instance:

import os
print(os.environ['HOME'])

To view a tabulation of all environment variables, utilize the os.environ attribute directly:

print(os.environ)

Beware that accessing a non-existent key raises a KeyError. To circumvent this, consider the following options:

• os.environ.get('KEY_THAT_MIGHT_EXIST'): Returns None if the key is absent.
• os.environ.get('KEY_THAT_MIGHT_EXIST', default_value): Returns the specified default_value if the key is absent.
• os.getenv('KEY_THAT_MIGHT_EXIST', default_value): An alternative to the latter method with the same functionality.

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