using php is_dir('~/tmp') works on one machine, but not on another. Why?

Question

I am trying to run the following code:

is_dir('~/tmp');

On a shared LAMP stack. It works fine, and returns TRUE. (That directory exists.) When I run the same code on my local box (Mac OSX 10.5, running Zend Server Community Ed) I get FALSE which is wrong because ~/tmp exists and has permissions set to 777.

I am missing a server directive somewhere, I think.

I have checked with phpInfo and I have (on both local and production):

safe_mode           Off         Off

safe_mode_exec_dir  no value    no value

safe_mode_gid           Off         Off

safe_mode_include_dir   no value    no value

open_basedir    no value    no value

So I think that I am missing something, but what?

[edit...] Some more information...

running the following on my local

get_current_user()

gives me 'username', which is the correct user whose ~/tmp directory I want to verify, BUT

shell_exec('whoami')

gives me 'daemon'. So I think I know where my problem is coming from. Now I just need to figure out if/how I can change the user that is running the web server on my local.

Answer 1

Are you expecting ~ to be expanded to your home directory? I would be reluctant to rely on that inside of PHP. (Just tested it on my Mac, and it did not expand.)

If possible, try changing ~/tmp to whatever the full path name is (e.g., something like /Users/meriial/tmp).

UPDATE: Alternatively, you could replace ~ with $_ENV['HOME'] as follows:

is_dir($_ENV['HOME'] . '/tmp');

Ideally, you'd check that array_key_exists('HOME',$_ENV) returns TRUE first and take some appropriate action (like use the system temp dir) if it doesn't.

For that matter, as @xmarcos points out, you could just use the system temp dir regardless using sys_get_temp_dir() and tempnam(). That may be the most portable and therefore your best choice. I think you can also do atomic temp file creation that way, so it may be more secure and less prone to race conditions.

Answer 2

Are you sure that directory existes inside your user directory?

Go to Terminal, and type cd ~/tmp. Does is work?

Update: you could use the sys_get_temp_dir if available, code example:

$some_log = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), 'some_log');    
var_dump($some_log);
// will return '/private/var/folders/.../some_logbqzDvg'

Answer 3

for all the virtual paths try to expand them first. do:

var_dump(realpath('~/tmp'));

and then see what happens,
and then try to opendir() it and see what error it gets.