Getting the path of the home directory in C#?

Question

Okay, I've checked Environment.SpecialFolder, but there's nothing in there for this.

I want to get the home directory of the current user in C#. (e.g. c:\documents and settings\user under XP, c:\users\user under Vista, and /home/user under Unix.)

I know I can read enviroment variables to find this out, but I want to do this in a cross-platform way.

Is there any way I can do this with .NET (preferably using mscorlib)?

UPDATE: Okay, this is the code I ended up using:

string homePath = (Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Unix || 
                   Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.MacOSX)
    ? Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("HOME")
    : Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables("%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%");

Answer 1

I believe what you are looking for is:

System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal)

For reference, it is infact contained in mscorlib.

Answer 2

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal);

Answer 3

When you say cross-platform way, what other OSs do you need to support? You may need to do some simple OS detection to select the method for finding the home directory if you're running on a non-Windows OS.

This website seems to give a way to do what you need in Windows.

Answer 4

Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal doesn't actually return the home folder, it returns the My Documents folder. The safest way to get the home folder on Win32 is to read %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. Reading environment variables is actually very portable to do (across Unix and Windows), so I'm not sure why the poster wanted to not do it.

Edited to add: For crossplatform (Windows/Unix) C#, I'd read $HOME on Unix and OSX and %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% on Windows.

Answer 5

I don't have a machine to test it on, but %HOMESHARE% might work for you. Otherwise, here's a pretty good list of environment variables.

Answer 6

The bottom line answer is No. The is no simple System based method in .NET to get the Home directory such that we could expect an implementation in both .NET on Windows and in Mono.

You will need to do some OS detection and branch to OS specific code.