From: Alan Davies <NOSPAMcs96and@...>
Date: 2003-09-23T01:30:22+09:00
Subject: Re: File.expand_path and ~ on windows

Sean O'Dell wrote:
> Tom Felker wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 17:16:00 +0100, Alan Davies wrote:
>>
>>
>>> From the pickaxe book...
>>>
>>> > File.expand_path( fileName [, aDirString ] ) -> fileName
>>>   <snip>
>>> > The given pathname may start with a ``~'', which expands to the
>>> > process owner's home directory (the environment variable HOME must be
>>> > set correctly). "~ user" expands to the named user's home directory"
>>>
>>> This isn't relevant on windows.  Thus:
>>
>>
>>
>> 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.
> 
> 
> Actually, I think it should just expand to C:\Documents and 
> Settings\UserName and you can append the rest from there.  That's the 
> *nix equivalent pretty much.
> 
>     Sean O'Dell
> 

Some interesting points being made on this thread, but the problem I had 
was that I has a files beginning with ~ in my temp folder.  Using 
expand_path to get the full path of these files failed.  If it expanded 
it to user directories, then it woulod be returning incrrect path names, 
simply because ~ has no meaning on windows.

If I have a file called ~foo in a dir called "c:/somedir", then I would 
expand_path to return "c:/somedir/~foo", not "C:/Documents and Settings/foo"

Alan.