~username expansion

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: ~username expansion by ysth (Canon) on Nov 01, 2004 at 02:09 UTC
Try just glob("~user"); on newer perls this will use File::Glob, but AFAIK it should also work on older perls. (Doesn't work with win32 perl, though glob("~") does.)	[reply]
Re^2: ~username expansion by Anonymous Monk on Nov 01, 2004 at 02:14 UTC
This worked perfectly and was exactly what I was after. Thanks!	[reply]
Re: ~username expansion by atcroft (Abbot) on Nov 01, 2004 at 01:21 UTC
The following is an example of how I have done it in the past: `#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; use File::Glob qw(:glob); my $dirstring = q(~user); my $newdirstring = File::Glob::bsd_glob( $dirstring, GLOB_TILDE \| GLOB_ERR ); print <<RESULTS; Old directory string: $dirstring New directory string: $newdirstring RESULTS` [download] Hope that helps.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ~username expansion by Anonymous Monk on Nov 01, 2004 at 01:35 UTC
Sadly, it appears I don't have File::Glob. It's a fairly old Perl installation, and I've noticed deficiencies fairly frequently. Thanks anyway for your input.	[reply]
Re^3: ~username expansion by superfrink (Curate) on Nov 01, 2004 at 04:15 UTC
I'm not familiar with File::Glob but perl does have a built in glob which I have used it in the past. Also I just looked at the docs for File::Glob and it looks like bsd_glob allows for flags which the built in glob does not. However the perldoc for glob notes this: Beginning with v5.6.0, this operator is implemented using the standard "File::Glob" extension. See File::Glob for details. In fact on my system (Perl v5.8.0, Slackware 9.1) glob matches the tilde in my username: `[frink@truth]$perl -e 'print map $_ .= "\n" , glob("~frink/tmp/*");' + /home/frink/tmp/137-03.mp3 /home/frink/tmp/156-03.mp3 /home/frink/tmp/2004-01.pdf /home/frink/tmp/2004-01.xls /home/frink/tmp/audio [frink@truth]$` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: ~username expansion by tachyon (Chancellor) on Nov 01, 2004 at 11:48 UTC
`grep username: /etc/passwd \| cut -d: -f6 perl -le 'print glob "~username"';` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: ~username expansion by belg4mit (Prior) on Nov 01, 2004 at 03:49 UTC
File::HomeDir `-- I'm not belgian but I play one on TV.`	[reply]
Re: ~username expansion by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 01, 2004 at 01:44 UTC
`sub get_home_dir { return $ENV{'HOME'} unless @_; my ($userid) = @_; local *PASSWD; open(PASSWD, '<', '/etc/passwd') or die("..."); my ($record) = grep { $_->[0] eq $userid } map { [ split(':') ] } <PASSWD>; return $record && $record->[5]; }` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ~username expansion by atcroft (Abbot) on Nov 01, 2004 at 02:13 UTC
You may wish to look at the getpwnam() function to get the directory entry for you, such as in the following example: #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; ( my $name, my $passwd, my $uid, my $gid, my $quota, my $comment, my $gcos, my $dir, my $shell, my $expire ) = getpwnam('user'); # Insert '(undef)' if variable is undefined. foreach my $x ( \$name, \$passwd, \$uid, \$gid, \$quota, \$comment, \$gcos, \$dir, \$shell, \$expire ) { ${$x} = '(undef)' unless ( defined( ${$x} ) ); } printf <<OUTPUT, $name, $passwd, $uid, $gid, $quota, $comment, $gcos, $dir, + $shell, $expire; getpwnam() OUTPUT: name: %s passwd: %s uid: %s gid: %s quota: %s comment: %s gcos: %s dir: %s shell: %s expire: %s OUTPUT [download] According to the docs for the function, a null list would be returned if the user did not exist. Hope that helps.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: ~username expansion by Fletch (Bishop) on Nov 01, 2004 at 02:01 UTC
It's better to use `getpwnam` rather than reading the password file by hand (for example if the machine uses NIS / YP and you're not on the master machine you'll miss accounts).	[reply] [d/l]
Re: ~username expansion by Kyoichi (Novice) on Nov 01, 2004 at 23:36 UTC
Perl Cookbook's Recipe 7.3, page 253 Greetings	[reply]