On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 16:15:23 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <[email protected]> wrote:
"Steven Schveighoffer" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:21:49 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <[email protected]> wrote:
Actually, if Windows did have one single equivalent to "/home/{user}",
then
I think it would be absolutely fantastic to make tilde mean "home
directory"
on Windows. But as things are, that's a moot point, of course.
The typical thing is to use the environment variable USERPROFILE, but
that's an odd dependency for a string processing library. Windows also
doesn't keep the same notion of home directory as Unix does. You can
read
more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_variable
If that's the only function that uses environment variables, and you
can't
have the function without it, it might be worth having it. However, we
must think about how that affects things like purity.
No, like I've said, all the possible choices are frequently wrong, and
that
includes USERPROFILE.
If you're selecting a default directory for the user to save/load a word
processing document, then USERPROFILE is wrong (should be the user's My
Documents - or the last used directory, whatever).
If you're storing per-user
application-settings/internal-application-data,
then USERPROFILE is wrong. It should be APPDATA if it's roaming data
(should
remain with the user on different computers). Or if it's machine-specific
(non-roaming) data, then it belongs in whatever the env variable for
"%APPDATA%\Local Settings\Application Data" is.
So expanding tilde to USERPROFILE will just encourage people to do the
wrong
thing.
Certainly not having that function on Windows will encourage them to
choose a wrong choice then, no? I mean if they want to find a "home
directory" and phobos doesn't support that, then they google online, find
something like %userprofile%, use it, and maybe file a bug against phobos
for good measure :)
So there is no right answer, we should at least come up with *an* answer.
In the Windows world of de-facto standards, we're bound to start a trend ;)
What about this?
~/Application Data => %APPDATA%
~/Local Settings/Application Data => %LOCALAPPDATA% or %USERPROFILE%\Local
Settings\Application Data
etc.
Last resort:
~ => %USERPROFILE%
In other words, expand more than just the tilde.
My thoughts are, if we try and take a stab at making something
intelligently decide where to store files, people will appreciate it more
than having to search the web for a right answer to something that doesn't
have one.
-Steve
