How to change directory according to the username?

Question

Is there are a way to change the user directory according to the username, something like

os.chdir('/home/arn/cake/')

But imagine that I don't know what's the username on that system. How do I find out what's the username, I know that python doesn't have variables so it's hard for me to get the username without variable.

@MrE: there's no portability requirement in this question, and no notion of a home directory in the other. — Fred Foo, Sep 13 '13 at 13:40

Fred Foo · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-13T13:43:33.203

2

pwd.getpwnam(username).pw_dir

is the home directory of username. The user executing the program has username os.getlogin().

"I know that python doesn't have variables" -- that's nonsense. You obviously mean environment variables, which you can access using os.getenv or os.environ.

edited Sep 13 '13 at 13:43

answered Sep 13 '13 at 13:37

Fred Foo

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Thank you larsmans, both of your comments are useful :-) – SpringField Sep 13 '13 at 13:42

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 13 '13 at 13:41

-1

Maybe there is a better answer but you can always use command calls:

import commands
user_dir = commands.getoutput("cd; pwd")

answered Sep 13 '13 at 13:41

Thomas

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`commands` has disappeared in Python 3.0 and has been deprecated since 2.6. – Fred Foo Sep 13 '13 at 13:42
Thank you for the suggestion Thomas, voted with + on your comment :-) – SpringField Sep 13 '13 at 13:57

How to change directory according to the username?

2 Answers2