I don't think using the $HOME environment variable is a no-brainer on Unix at all -- though it may be fine for simple applications without high security requirements. Remember, $HOME is just an environment variable, and the user may set it to whatever he/she wants. Worse, it may be incorrectly set when running a script in unusual environments -- via su, for example, I've sometimes seen $HOME incorrectly set to root's home directory. Finally, some systems may use $LOGDIR instead of $HOME (admittedly, this is very rare).

Also, '~/.myapp' is shell-specific which is not very portable, failing on many versions of /bin/sh, for instance.

If the whole application is written Perl, I'd look at using the getpwuid/getpwnam functions on Unix. The Perl $< and $> special variables and the getlogin function may also prove handy.

In reply to Re: (OT) cross-platform $HOME by eyepopslikeamosquito
in thread (OT) cross-platform $HOME by thraxil

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.