Obtain user's home directory

Question

Is the following the best way of obtaining the running user's home directory? Or is there a specific function that I've ovelooked?

os.Getenv("HOME")

If the above is correct, does anyone happen to know whether this approach is guaranteed to work on non-Linux platforms, e.g. Windows?

Answer 1

In go 1.0.3 ( probably earlier, too ) the following works:

package main
import (
    "os/user"
    "fmt"
    "log"
)
func main() {
    usr, err := user.Current()
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatal( err )
    }
    fmt.Println( usr.HomeDir )
}

If it is important to cross-compile, consider the homedir library

Answer 2

os.UserHomeDir()

In go1.12+ you can use os.UserHomeDir()

home, err := os.UserHomeDir()

See https://golang.org/pkg/os/#UserHomeDir

That should work even without CGO enabled (i.e. FROM scratch) and without having to parse /etc/passwd or other such nonsense.

Answer 3

For example,

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "runtime"
)

func UserHomeDir() string {
    if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
        home := os.Getenv("HOMEDRIVE") + os.Getenv("HOMEPATH")
        if home == "" {
            home = os.Getenv("USERPROFILE")
        }
        return home
    }
    return os.Getenv("HOME")
}

func main() {
    dir := UserHomeDir()
    fmt.Println(dir)
}

Answer 4

Here's a nice, concise way to do it (if you're only running on a UNIX based system):

import (
  "os"
)

var home string = os.Getenv("HOME")

That just queries the $HOME environment variable.

--- Edit ---

I now see that this same method was suggested above. I'll leave this example here as a distilled solution.

Answer 5

Similar answer to @peterSO but respects the XDG_CONFIG_HOME path for linux.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "runtime"
)

func userHomeDir() string {
    if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
        home := os.Getenv("HOMEDRIVE") + os.Getenv("HOMEPATH")
        if home == "" {
            home = os.Getenv("USERPROFILE")
        }
        return home
    } else if runtime.GOOS == "linux" {
        home := os.Getenv("XDG_CONFIG_HOME")
        if home != "" {
            return home
        }
    }
    return os.Getenv("HOME")
}

func main() {
    fmt.Println(userHomeDir())
}

Answer 6

You should use the environment variable USERPROFILE or HOMEPATH under Windows. See Recognized Environment Variables (a more apropos documentation link would be welcomed).

Answer 7

go1.8rc2 has the go/build/defaultGOPATH function which gets the home directory. https://github.com/golang/go/blob/go1.8rc2/src/go/build/build.go#L260-L277

The following code is extracted from the defaultGOPATH function.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "runtime"
)

func UserHomeDir() string {
    env := "HOME"
    if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
        env = "USERPROFILE"
    } else if runtime.GOOS == "plan9" {
        env = "home"
    }
    return os.Getenv(env)
}

func main() {
    dir := UserHomeDir()
    fmt.Println(dir)
}