From: Sean Middleditch <elanthis@...>
Date: 2001-11-25T09:07:35+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26384] Re: Converting ~fred to home directory path

On Sat, 2001-11-24 at 18:19, HarryO wrote:
> Does ruby provide a way to convert things like ~fred into the appropriate
> full path name to the user's home directory under UNIX?
> 
> If not, I guess the right way to do it is to simply read the /etc/passwd
> file?  Does ruby have a class that allows playing with the contents of
> the password file cleanly?

No no.  ~,^  Read the $HOME environment variable.  /etc/passwd might not
even have the user in it (login over NIS or LDAP).  $HOME is supposed to
be set by the login shell, so use that.

> 
> Perhaps this could be added to the globbing that Dir::[] does?