From: eg <eg@...>
Date: 2004-02-27T19:19:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Profile-independent directory specification for NT?

Florian G. Pflug wrote:
> 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 ;-) ).
> 
> 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
> 
> 

In Win2K and up you can call a Shell function SHGetFolderPath( ) which 
can be used to return this directory.

for example,

SHGetFolderPath(NULL, CSIDL_MYDOCUMENTS, 
NULL, 0, szPath)


Alternatively, you can look in the registry in the following branch:
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell 
Folders"

Under Win2K and up, there will be an entry labelled "Personal" which 
contains this directory name.