From: djberg96@... (Daniel Berger)
Date: 2004-02-26T12:05:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Profile-independent directory specification for NT?

"Florian G. Pflug" <fgp@phlo.org> wrote in message news:<20040225194848.GA24254@foobar.solution-x.com>...
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 10:03:51PM +0900, Moran, Craig M (BAH) wrote:
> > Is there a way to specify a directory in Ruby that is profile-independent
> > for the Windows NT variants?  For example, if I wanted to do this in VBA for
> > the currently logged in user's My Documents folder, it would look like this:
> > ProfilePath = Environ("USERPROFILE") & "\My Documents\"
> > This way, regardless of who is logged in and runs the script, it will always
> > point to their own My Documents folder.  Thanks in advance for the help-
> Be aware that this is only correct on english versions of windows. In german
> e.g, the folder is not named "My Documents" but "Meine Dateien" (or
> something like that - don't use windows very often ;-) ).

In theory, each user has a home directory set.  You can see if it's
set by going to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Users and
Passwords -> Advanced -> Advanced (again) -> Click on users -> right
click to view properties -> click "Profile" tab.

You can use the win32-etc module to get at this information as well in
a language-neutral way:

require "win32/etc"
include Win32

Etc.passwd{ |s|
   p s.name
   p s.home_dir
}

Often times, however, this value isn't set and you have to resort to
environment variables.
 
> I believe that the windows registry is the right place to get that
> information from. (I have to admit though, that I have no idea how you could access
> the registry from ruby, and where you find this information there).
> 
> greetings, Florian Pflug

You can use "win32/registry" which ships with 1.8.1.  However, there's
no advantage to using the registry over the environment variable since
the two are identical as far as I know.

Regards,

Dan