From: "Berger, Daniel" <djberge@...>
Date: 2003-09-20T01:45:14+09:00
Subject: Re: File.expand_path and ~ on windows

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean O'Dell [mailto:sean@cSePlsoAfMt.com[REMOVE_THE_SPAM]] 
> Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 10:19 AM
> To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
> Subject: Re: File.expand_path and ~ on windows
> 
> 
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 11:36:28 +0900, Tom Felker wrote:
> > 
> >>Wouldn't it make more sense to expand it to My Documents 
> (C:\Documents 
> >>and Settings\Username\My Documents on WinXP)?  I suppose it 
> would be 
> >>worthwhile to be able to disable it, though.
> > 
> > 
> > No. ~ has no meaning to Windows shells. There are times when I wish 
> > that it
> > didn't to Unix shells. After all, that's what ${HOME} is for.
> 
> This is true; but I think for portability reasons, since COMMAND.COM 
> isn't exactly what I would call a culture of shell idioms, ~ 
> and ${HOME} 
> (%HOME%) should be considered synonymous.  If not ~, then at least 
> ${HOME} ought to point to C:\Documents and Settings\UserName I think.
> 
> 	Sean O'Dell

FWIW, it is possible to set a HOME directory.  On XP Pro: Control Panel ->
User Accounts -> Advanced -> Users.

Then, right click on a given user and click "properties" and click the
"profile" tab.  There you should see a "home folder" option.  This is what
sets the LPUSER_INFO_11 struct value for the usri11_home_dir member.

So, in theory you can get a user's home dir like this:

# Available on RAA - shameless plug
require "sys/win32etc"
include Sys

home = Win32Etc.getpwnam("some_user").home_dir

However, it seems that in practice this value is rarely set (it wasn't in
any of the 3 machines that I tested) and that %HOME% should be the first
default.

Regards,

Dan