A utility function to grab usernames and other identifying info from the current user to be used as potential identification options.

GetUserNameOptions.py

import os

def getLoggedOnUserName():
    return os.getenv( "LOGNAME", os.getenv("USERNAME") )
    
# another UNIX option: pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid())[0]

# http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12821946/how-can-i-remove-the-white-characters-from-configuration-file
def getStrippedFile(filename):
    import StringIO
    return StringIO.StringIO('\n'.join(line.strip() for line in open( filename )))

def getGitUserName():
    import ConfigParser
    config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
    config.readfp( getStrippedFile( os.path.expanduser('~/.gitconfig') ) )
    return config.get('user','name')

def getConfigUserName( filename ):
    import ConfigParser
    config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
    config.readfp( getStrippedFile( filename ) )
    return config.get('user','name')
    
def main():
    print getLoggedOnUserName()
    print getGitUserName()
    
if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

Related to: homebysix/recipe-robot#63