title: How do I determine if my python shell is executing in 32bit or 64bit?
body: <p>I need a way to tell what mode the shell is in from within the shell.</p>
  <p>While I'm primarily an OS X user, I'd be interested in knowing about other platforms as well.</p>
  <p>I've tried looking at the <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/platform.html" rel="noreferrer">platform</a> module but it seems only to tell you about &quot;about the bit architecture and the linkage format used for the executable&quot;: the binary is compiled as 64bit though (I'm running on OS X 10.6) so it seems to always report 64bit even though I'm using the methods <a href="https://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/python.1.html" rel="noreferrer">described here</a> to force 32bit mode).</p>