Python get proper line ending

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

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.

Oh, I figured it out. Apparently, PEP-278 states the following:

Any line ending in the input file will be seen as a '\n' in Python, so little other code has to change to handle universal newlines.

If specify test resp. binary properly when opening files, and use universal newlines, you shouldn't have to worry about different newlines most of the time.

But if you have to, use os.linesep