Path ... where is my application's home dir?

[Marco Aschwanden]

>> I want to store a file in the application directory.
>
> 1) Don't
>
> 2) Why?

- I want to store the current state of the application when leaving the 
application in an ini-file.
- It is a "single-user" pc!
- It is Windows.
- I don't like (others would say hate) to use the registry.
- I prefer having ini-files in the application directory.


> 3) Under Unix in general there is no reliable, portable way to
>    do that.
>
>> sys.argv[0] does not work for my purposes... do you have any
>> other ideas.
>
> Yes.
>
> It sounds like you're trying to do a bad thing in the Unix
> world.  Firstly, some smart admins have entire filesystems
> mounted read-only.  Your application may live in one of those.
>
> Secondly, global configuration files go in /etc.  Per-user
> configuration files go in the user's home directory in
> .<appname>-conf .<appname>rc or under the .<appname>/
> directory.  If you want them preserved across reboots, then
> caches of stuff go in /var/cache/<appname>.  Files that don't
> need to survive a reboot go in /tmp.
>
> What are you trying to do?

As I said: It is a windows machine, single user, small app... but I am 
very glad you made this remarks, cause it reminds me to consider 
portability when writing apps - and now I can see, where I am failing. 
Thanks.

And yes, the best place to store this information would be in the user's 
home dir, but then: Where is it? How to find it under Windows - every 
version of windows changes the place for home dirs. It would be nice to 
have something like this in a system/version independet way:

sys.users_home_dir

Is there anything like it in Python?

Thanks,
Marco