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?

Why do you think it should replace `$HOME` with the actual home path? — Captain Obvlious, Jul 02 '13 at 04:58

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 02 '13 at 05:08

3

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();
}

answered Jul 02 '13 at 05:08

Captain Obvlious

19,754
5
44
74

2

You can also use `QDir::homePath()` to get the home path. And `qgetenv` can be used instead of `std::getenv`. – Pavel Strakhov Jul 02 '13 at 06:39
+1 for `QDir::homePath()`. That works on Windows, too. `$HOME` is POSIX. – MSalters Jul 02 '13 at 12:05
@Riateche, thank you that really helped but now I have another problem. I can access $HOME, but I can't access other user defined environment variables. Would be great if you can help me out with this. – Samridhi Singhi Jul 04 '13 at 05:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '13 at 05:30

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.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 02 '13 at 07:13

0

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

answered Jul 02 '13 at 07:13

ankit.ckt

83
4

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jul 02 '13 at 12:11

0

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

answered Jul 02 '13 at 12:11

kwirz

76
2

thank you,it really helped, but now I want to access userdefined environment variables. qgetenv doesn't give me the answer. Please help me out. – Samridhi Singhi Jul 04 '13 at 05:13

Using $HOME in Qt

4 Answers4