pythoncross-platformhome-directory

What is a cross-platform way to get the home directory?

I need to get the location of the home directory of the current logged-on user. Currently, I've been using the following on Linux:

os.getenv("HOME")

However, this does not work on Windows. What is the correct cross-platform way to do this ?

Solution

  • On Python 3.5+ you can use pathlib.Path.home():

    from pathlib import Path
home = Path.home()

# example usage:
with open(home / ".ssh" / "known_hosts") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()

    to get a pathlib.PosixPath object. Use str() to convert to a string if necessary.

    On older Python versions, you can use os.path.expanduser.

    from os.path import expanduser
home = expanduser("~")