Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 09:12:55 -0800 From: Bill Campbell <freebsd@celestial.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Bill Campbell <freebsd@celestial.com> Subject: Re: [OT] Does "~" always point to $HOME? Message-ID: <20070127171255.GA13120@ayn.mi.celestial.com> In-Reply-To: <45BB2EEB.10204@infracaninophile.co.uk> References: <20070126175122.64D2616A500@hub.freebsd.org> <20070126230241.GA93074@ns.umpquanet.com> <20070126231913.GA12604@ayn.mi.celestial.com> <45BB2EEB.10204@infracaninophile.co.uk>
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On Sat, Jan 27, 2007, Matthew Seaman wrote:
>Bill Campbell wrote:
...
>> Probably the most portable way to do this would be to use awk. A
>> simple script, homedir, might look like this:
>>
>> #!/bin/sh
>> # getting the backwhacks correct is sometimes ``interesting''
>> homedir=`awk -F: "/^$1:/{print \\$6}" /etc/passwd`
>>
>> [ -z "$homedir" ] && {
>> echo 'empty home for ' $1 2>&1
>> exit 1
>> }
>> echo $homedir
>> exit 0
>
>That does assume that all the user information is stored within the
>local /etc/passwd -- if you're using NIS or LDAP or anything
>like that, then you need a method that calls getpwnam(3) for you.
A one-liner that should take care of these is:
python -c "import os.path; print os.path.expanduser('~$username')"
(This doesn't work with python-1.5.1 on an ancient Linux system
as os.path didn't appear until later).
Bill
--
INTERNET: bill@Celestial.COM Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/ PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX: (206) 232-9186 Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676
``A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
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