[Python-Dev] ntpath r54364

[Tim Golden]

Christian Heimes wrote:
> Paul Moore wrote:
>> I'd recommend that this change be reverted. To correctly get another
>> user's home directory would involve reading (via the registry, or
>> maybe some utility function I couldn't find at a quick glance) the
>> value of HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH which is set for the other user. (In fact,
>> given that I guess these could be set in a login script, it's entirely
>> possible that the information simply isn't available).
> 
> I concur! The changes should be reverted. The implementation is most
> likely to fail in more elaborate cases, e.g. c:\users\a\alpha or
> c:\users\groupa\name. The proper way for a ~user implementation is a
> bunch of Win32 API calls.

Frustratingly, I don't believe there's *any* canonical
way to find ~user without actually going through the whole
process of getting a token and impersonating them. If
they've logged onto this machine already you can have
a good go by following the code posted the other day
on c.l.py [1] (although I'm now not sure about the l10n
aspects which Christian mentioned). Any technique of
going up one (from your own profile) and then down one
is no better than assuming that all users are in /home
on a *nix box.

As to a logged-on user's *own* home path, I'd prefer
HOMEDRIVE/PATH over USERPROFILE since the latter is at
least explictly named HOMEsomething, although the latter
can be the fallback. Both are present on Win2k & on WinXP.
Can't check WinNT or Win9x but I don't know if we're looking
to support those or not.

TJG

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/msg/71b20a67a9ca76dd