Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:52:27 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Bill Campbell <freebsd@celestial.com> Subject: Re: [OT] Does "~" always point to $HOME? Message-ID: <45BB2EEB.10204@infracaninophile.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20070126231913.GA12604@ayn.mi.celestial.com> References: <20070126175122.64D2616A500@hub.freebsd.org> <20070126230241.GA93074@ns.umpquanet.com> <20070126231913.GA12604@ayn.mi.celestial.com>
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Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 26, 2007, James Long wrote:
>>> Message: 24
>>> Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:22:44 -0800
>>> From: Bill Campbell <freebsd@celestial.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [OT] Does "~" always point to $HOME?
>>> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Bill Campbell
>>> <freebsd@celestial.com>
>>> Message-ID: <20070126172244.GB6575@ayn.mi.celestial.com>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3Dus-ascii
>>>
>>> My point isn't whether the FreeBSD /bin/sh expands it, but that not a=
ll
>>> systems are FreeBSD, and that one can have problems on other *NIX sys=
tems.
>>>
>>> Knowing where there may be differences, and avoiding the assumptions =
that a
>>> program behaves the same on all systems, can help writing code that's=
>>> portable without surprises.
>> This begs the rookie question:
>>
>> What is the portable way to determine an aribtrary user's home directo=
ry
>> then, if ~username is not portable across shells?
>>
>> Does one just have to grep and awk /etc/passwd? Is the format of
>> /etc/passwd portable, such that one standard grep/awk sequence will=20
>> portably return the home directory for user "username"?
>=20
> Probably the most portable way to do this would be to use awk. A
> simple script, homedir, might look like this:
>=20
> #!/bin/sh
> # getting the backwhacks correct is sometimes ``interesting''
> homedir=3D`awk -F: "/^$1:/{print \\$6}" /etc/passwd`
>=20
> [ -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.=20
TIMTOWTDI:
pw user show -n $username | cut -d: -f 9 (But pw(8) is FreeBSD specific=
)
perl -le "print +(getpwnam("$username"))[7];"
su $username -c 'echo $HOME' (But only if the script is running with
root privileges)
Of course, none of these methods are guaranteed to work in all
circumstances. In which case, you might as well choose to program
in a language or for an interpreter that is readily available on the
systems you are writing the code for and that provides the functionality
you need. On FreeBSD that probably comes down to using ~username with
/bin/sh (with liberal comments warning of uportable assumptions, of
course) -- which should work unmodified with any of the *BSDs or MacOS X.=
If you program the rest of the script carefully it should also work with
bash under Linux (and others) or even (I think) ksh on Solaris.
Portability is hard.
Cheers,
Matthew
--=20
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 7 Priory Courtyard
Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
Kent, CT11 9PW
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