Using $HOME in Qt

Question

I am working on a Qt project and I want the working directories to be dynamically set for the program will be run on different systems.

I have enclosed the code for your reference.

QProcess Home;
Home.start("echo",QStringList() << "$HOME");
Home.waitForFinished(-1);
qDebug() << Home.readAllStandardOutput();

But the qDebug() prints "$HOME" and not the actual home path. Why does this happen? Is There any other way of doing this?

Answer 1

You can use std::getenv to retrieve the home path set in the processes environment.

#include <cstdlib>

const char *homePath = std::getenv("HOME");
if(homePath != NULL)
{
    QProcess Home;
    Home.start("echo",QStringList() << homePath);
    Home.waitForFinished(-1);
    qDebug() << Home.readAllStandardOutput();
}

Answer 2

Here is another way to do it.

QStringList QProcess::systemEnvironment () [static]

http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qprocess.html#systemEnvironment

 QStringList environment = QProcess::systemEnvironment();
  // environment = {"PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin",
  //                "USER=greg", "HOME=/home/greg"}

Hope that helps.

Answer 3

QByteArray qgetenv ( const char * varName ) is the function provided by QT library to fetch any environment variable on all platforms.

getenv() seems to be deprecated on Windows VS2005 onward more info here

Answer 4

Especially for home path you should use QDir::homePath()