Get Path of current Script

[Grant Edwards]

On 2011-03-14, Alexander Schatten <aschatt at gmail.com> wrote:

> They don't. Hm, ok, I am always for best practices. If there is a
> better way to do it I am open for suggestions ;-) How would the best
> practice be to load configuration data from a file.
>
> I mean, this is something very common: you write a program or a
> script and want to load some configuration data.

Indeed that is very common, and there's been a "standard" way to do
that since before dirt.

The standard on Unix is to look in the following places in (this
order), and use the first one you find:

 1) The location specified by a command line option (-f or -c is
    common).

 2) The location specified by an environment variable like
    MYPROGNAME_CONFIG.

 3) The current directory (usually a "hidden" file name like
    .myprognamerc or .myprog.config)

 4) The current user's home directory -- same file name as 3).

 5) The "configuration directory".  Each distro has a spec for where
    that is, but it's usually _not_ a hidden file name, and is
    somemthing like /etc/myprogname.conf or /etc/myprognamerc.  For
    locally-installed stuff, it's usually /usr/local/etc/muyprog.conf
    or something like that.

Notice that it has nothing to do with the location of the program's
executable.

Not all Unix apps look in all 5 places (#2, is probably not quite as
universal as the rest).

Some apps have a directory of config files instead of a single file,
but the general plan is the same.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I smell like a wet
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