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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T02:26:39+00:00

I’m a little confused with the python on osx. I do not know if

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I’m a little confused with the python on osx. I do not know if the previous owner of the laptop has installed macpython using macport. And I remembered that osx has an builtin version of python. I tried using type -a python and the result returned 

python is /usr/bin/python
python is /usr/local/bin/python

However running both python at these locations give me [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin. Do they both refer to the same builtin python mac provided?

I also read that installing macpython one would 

     A MacPython 2.5 folder in your Applications folder. In here you
 find IDLE, the development environment that is a standard part of
 official Python distributions...

I looked at Applications, and theres a MacPort folder with python2.6 and the mentioned stuff in it. But running IDLE, i find the same message as above.

Hmm I’m a little confused. Which is which?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] is the version of GCC that the Python(s) were built with, not the version of Python itself. That information should be on the previous line. For example:

    # Apple-supplied Python 2.6 in OS X 10.6
$ /usr/bin/python
Python 2.6.1 (r261:67515, Jun 24 2010, 21:47:49) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5646)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

# python.org Python 2.7.2 (also built with newer gcc)
$ /usr/local/bin/python
Python 2.7.2 (v2.7.2:8527427914a2, Jun 11 2011, 15:22:34) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

    Items in /usr/bin should always be or link to files supplied by Apple in OS X, unless someone has been ill-advisedly changing things there. To see exactly where the /usr/local/bin/python is linked to:

    $ ls -l /usr/local/bin/python
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  68 Jul  5 10:05 /usr/local/bin/python@ -> ../../../Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python

    In this case, that is typical for a python.org installed Python instance or it could be one built from source.

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