Proposal for std.path replacement

[Regan Heath]

On Fri, 04 Mar 2011 10:13:04 -0000, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
> "Lars T. Kyllingstad" <public at kyllingen.NOSPAMnet> wrote in message
> news:ikqabr$796$4 at digitalmars.com...
>>
>>>
>>> - Windows *does* have a concept of a home dir, so maybe tilde should be
>>> expanded even on Windows. Only problem though is that Windows has *two*
>>> main home dirs for each user: %HOMEPATH% for user-created files and
>>> %APPDATA% for application data. (And some others, but I don't think any
>>> of the others are appropriate for "~") So maybe there should be these
>>> three:
>>>
>>>         1. expandTilde: Exactly as it is now: expands ~ on posix, no-op
>>>         on
>>> windows.
>>>
>>>         2. expandHomeDir: On posix: Expands "~" and "%HOMEDIR%" to the
>>> user's home directory. On windows: Expands "~" and "%HOMEDIR%" to
>>> whatever %HOMEDIR% is set to.
>>>
>>>         3. expandAppDataDir: On posix: Expands "~" and "%APPDATA%" to
>>>         the
>>> user's home directory. On windows: Expands "~" and "%APPDATA%" to
>>> whatever %APPDATA% is set to.
>>
>> On POSIX you expect to be able to use ~ anywhere you're asked to input a
>> path/filename.  Is this the case on Windows?  Can you write %HOMEDIR%
>> \report.doc in Word's "Open" dialog, for instance?
>>
>
> No, it's just an environment variable.

Actually, you can.  I just tried Textpad and Word 2010 and both accepted  
me typing:

%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\ (at this point they both bring up suggestions)
%APPDATA%\ (at this point they both bring up suggestions)

FYI.. my environment variables are:

APPDATA=C:\Users\rheath.<domain>\AppData\Roaming
HOMEDRIVE=C:
HOMEPATH=\Users\rheath.<domain>

I don't have HOMEDIR, .. this is on Windows 7 x64 BTW.

> In fact, it seems that % is a valid
> filename character (I wouldn't have even guessed that), so expanding any  
> of
> the %BLAH% stuff in std.path is probably a bad idea after all.

Not necessarily, but it might require a bit more double-checking, for  
example..

If you type the following at command prompt you get an error.
copy con test%HOMEDRIVE%.txt

"The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

Because %HOMEDRIVE% is expanded to C: and testC:.txt is invalid.

But these both work:
copy con test%HOMEDRIVE.txt (missing 2nd %)
copy con test%HOMEDRIV%.txt (non-existant envvar)

In the latter case you actually get a file named "test%HOMEDRIV%.txt", it  
hasn't attempted to replace the non-existant envvar with a blank string,  
as that would result in "test.txt".

R

p.s. "copy con" means copy console, type something, then press ctrl+z to  
mark EOF.

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