Getting the path of the home directory in C#?

Question

Okay, I've checked Environment.SpecialFolder, but there's nothing in there for this.

I want to get the home directory of the current user in C#. (e.g. c:\documents and settings\user under XP, c:\users\user under Vista, and /home/user under Unix.)

I know I can read enviroment variables to find this out, but I want to do this in a cross-platform way.

Is there any way I can do this with .NET (preferably using mscorlib)?

UPDATE: Okay, this is the code I ended up using:

string homePath = (Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Unix || 
                   Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.MacOSX)
    ? Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("HOME")
    : Environment.ExpandEnvironmentVariables("%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%");

Dunno about your machine, but on my XP box %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% is a network directory, not c:\Documents and Settings\user\MSalters\ — MSalters, Jul 17 '09 at 14:55
To be honest, I consider this exact problem to be an underimplementation of .NET... you should look at the documentation for CSIDLS (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb762494.aspx) to see a full list of what Windows supports: What you are actually looking for is CSIDL_PROFILE, which is supported in Windows, but not by .NET for some unfathomable reason. — Matthew Scharley, Jul 17 '09 at 15:01
PlatformID.MacOSX is not necessary, PlatformID.Unix returns true on MacOSX, too (or at the very least it used to). — Stefan Steiger, Sep 06 '15 at 21:26

score 150 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 21 '21 at 01:04

150

You are looking for Environment.SpecialFolder.UserProfile which refers to C:\Users\myname on Windows and /home/myname on Unix/Linux:

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.UserProfile)

Note that Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal is My Documents (or Documents in win7 and above), but same as home directory on Unix/Linux.

edited Mar 21 '21 at 01:04

Sridhar Ratnakumar

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answered Sep 13 '11 at 15:26

James

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Note that UserProfile is new in .NET 4.0, if you use .NET 2.0/3.5, you have to call win32 API manually with value 40 for UserProfile – linquize Jul 03 '12 at 04:54
And "My Documents" isn't the same as the home directory, except in Windows 95, 98 and ME. – Jon Hanna Jan 29 '14 at 15:11
2

Don't forget to use System.IO.Path.DirectorySeparatorChar to build your file path in order to keep it portable. – thomiel Dec 26 '14 at 13:51
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Don't use DirectorySeperatorChar manually. Use Path.Combine. – John Gietzen Mar 08 '15 at 21:12
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This works with .net core on Linux too, returning the home folder – Mark Adamson Nov 26 '20 at 20:58

score 59 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 18 '17 at 13:47

59

Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal doesn't actually return the home folder, it returns the My Documents folder. The safest way to get the home folder on Win32 is to read %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. Reading environment variables is actually very portable to do (across Unix and Windows), so I'm not sure why the poster wanted to not do it.

Edited to add: For crossplatform (Windows/Unix) C#, I'd read $HOME on Unix and OSX and %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% on Windows.

edited Sep 18 '17 at 13:47

StackzOfZtuff

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answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:48

sigint

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I know for a fact HOMEDRIVE doesn't exist on *nix, and normally it's just HOME, not HOMEPATH. – Matthew Scharley Jul 17 '09 at 14:50
Matthew, you're right. I added a clarification on the original comment. – sigint Jul 17 '09 at 14:51
14

Can you not use %USERPROFILE% on Windows? – Lucas Jones Jul 17 '09 at 14:53
Mac OSX *is* UNIX, officially. It also works on Linux, which is similar enough to UNIX. – MSalters Jul 17 '09 at 14:53
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$HOME works on OS X too. This still isn't the correct answer as far as I'm concerned though since you're doing platform detection... but to get at the exact values asked for, that's about what you have to do. – Matthew Scharley Jul 17 '09 at 14:54
Actually, OS X is BSD, but that's a distinction for the anals of some history book or another... – Matthew Scharley Jul 17 '09 at 14:55
Thank you, I posted the code I ended up using to the original question. – MiffTheFox Jul 17 '09 at 14:58
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person-b, %USERPROFILE% and %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% are often the same on personal PCs, but often point to different places in networked environments. E.g., at work my USERPROFILE is C:\Documents and Settings\username but home directory is Z:\, which is a networked drive which is backed up by IT regularly. – sigint Jul 17 '09 at 15:04
I have exactly the same setup at my work environment as sigint. – Tahir Hassan Mar 24 '17 at 20:56

score 16 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:44

16

I believe what you are looking for is:

System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal)

For reference, it is infact contained in mscorlib.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:44

Matthew Scharley

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That returns the My Documents folder. – MiffTheFox Jul 17 '09 at 14:48
"My Documents" *is* the closest thing Windows has to a home directory. – MSalters Jul 17 '09 at 14:50
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@MStallers No, %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% is. – MiffTheFox Jul 17 '09 at 14:51
Not quite... but the alternative is PInvoke, and the OP asked for a managed solution. – Matthew Scharley Jul 17 '09 at 14:52
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Note that Environment.SpecialFolder.UserProfile is available in .NET 4.0, which is what you want – linquize Jul 03 '12 at 04:57
return System.IO.Path.GetFullPath( System.IO.Path.Combine(System.Environment.GetFolderPath(System.Environment.SpecialFolder.Personal), "..") ); – Stefan Steiger Jun 26 '20 at 15:24
Your suggestion, Stefan, isn't actually a good one. One shouldn't assume the parent of the user's My Documents directory is automatically the user home directory. The user can set any folder as their My Documents folder. – JaykeBird Jan 03 '23 at 01:24

score 8 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 21 '18 at 00:57

8

In DotNetCore 1.1 System.Environment.SpecialFolder does not exist. It might exist in 2.0-beta. Until then, to do this you can use the following:

var envHome = RuntimeInformation.IsOSPlatform(OSPlatform.Windows) ? "HOMEPATH" : "HOME";
var home = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable(envHome);`

edited Feb 21 '18 at 00:57

abatishchev

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answered Aug 08 '17 at 20:29

KBP

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I'm using 2.0 and `System.Environment.SpecialFolder` exists – snotyak Aug 16 '17 at 22:23

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:55

4

The bottom line answer is No. The is no simple System based method in .NET to get the Home directory such that we could expect an implementation in both .NET on Windows and in Mono.

You will need to do some OS detection and branch to OS specific code.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:55

AnthonyWJones

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score 2 · Answer 6 · edited Feb 27 '19 at 19:07

This can be done using GetEnvironmentVariable in System.IO:

public string GetUserHome() {
    var homeDrive = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("HOMEDRIVE");
    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(homeDrive))
    {
        var homePath = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("HOMEPATH");
        if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(homePath))
        {            
            var fullHomePath = homeDrive + Path.DirectorySeparatorChar + homePath;
            return Path.Combine(fullHomePath, "myFolder");
        }
        else
        {
            throw new Exception("Environment variable error, there is no 'HOMEPATH'");
        }
    }
    else
    {
        throw new Exception("Environment variable error, there is no 'HOMEDRIVE'");
    }
}

Then it produces under windows: C:\\\\Users\\myusername\\myFolder

Note that if you use

var fullHomePath = Path.Combine(homeDrive.ToString(), homePath.ToString())

it fails because it produces: \\Users\\myusername\\myFolder

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:47

1

When you say cross-platform way, what other OSs do you need to support? You may need to do some simple OS detection to select the method for finding the home directory if you're running on a non-Windows OS.

This website seems to give a way to do what you need in Windows.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:47

John D.

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Unless you're using some braindead implementation of the Framework Environment.GetFolder() should work cross-platform. – R. Martinho Fernandes Jul 17 '09 at 14:48
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*Should*. MS's implementation doesn't do it. – R. Martinho Fernandes Jul 17 '09 at 14:56

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 01 '23 at 14:34

Just for future reference, the list of pre-defined variables in Windows 10, taken from Windows 10 default environment variables.

VARIABLE	WINDOWS 10
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%	C:\ProgramData
%APPDATA%	C:\Users{username}\AppData\Roaming
%CD%	Current directory full path. (cmd only)
%CMDCMDLINE%	Returns exact command line used to start current cmd.exe session. (cmd only)
%CMDEXTVERSION%	Number of current command processor extensions. (cmd only)
%CommonProgramFiles%	C:\Program Files\Common Files
%CommonProgramFiles(x86)%	C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files
%CommonProgramW6432%	C:\Program Files\Common Files
%COMPUTERNAME%	The computer name of the current local system.
%COMSPEC%	C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe
%DATE%	Current date in format determined by Date command. (cmd only)
%ERRORLEVEL%	Number defining exit status of previous command or program. (cmd only)
%HOMEDRIVE%	C:\|
%HOMEPATH%	C:\Users{username}
%LOCALAPPDATA%	C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local
%LOGONSERVER%	\{domain_logon_server} \MicrosoftAccount
%NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS%	8
%OS%	Windows_NT
%PATH%	C:\Windows; C:\Windows\System32; C:\Windows\System32\Wbem; C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0
%PathExt%	.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.MSC
%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%	AMD64
%PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER%	Intel64 Family 6 Model 158 Stepping 9, GenuineIntel
%PROCESSOR_LEVEL%	6
%PROCESSOR_REVISION%	9e09
%PROGRAMDATA%	C:\ProgramData
%PROGRAMFILES%	C:\Program Files
%ProgramW6432%	C:\Program Files
%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%	C:\Program Files (x86)
%PROMPT%	Code for current command prompt format. Code is usually $P$G (cmd only)
%PSModulePath%	C:\Windows\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\|
%PUBLIC%	C:\Users\Public
%RANDOM%	To get random number between 0 and 32767. (cmd only)
%SessionName%	When logging on directly to machine, returns "Console". When client connects via terminal server session, is combination of connection name, followed by pound symbol {#} and session number.
%SystemDrive%	C:
%SystemRoot%	C:\Windows
%TEMP%	C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Temp
%TMP%	C:\Users{username}\AppData\Local\Temp
%TIME%	Current time in format determined by Time command. (cmd only)
%USERDOMAIN%	The network domain name associated with the current user.
%USERDOMAIN_ROAMINGPROFILE%	The network domain name associated with the current roaming profile.
%USERNAME%	{username}
%USERPROFILE%	C:\Users{username}
%WINDIR%	C:\Windows

Had to manually put it to markdown, so if I made an error, please comment. — Xan-Kun Clark-Davis, Jan 01 '23 at 14:35

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:50

0

I don't have a machine to test it on, but %HOMESHARE% might work for you. Otherwise, here's a pretty good list of environment variables.

answered Jul 17 '09 at 14:50

JP Alioto

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Getting the path of the home directory in C#?

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