How do I change the current working directory of a Python program to the user's home directory?

Question

I'm in python 3.7.3 on MacOS 10.14.5.
I found the os.chdir() to change the programs working directory. Now I need to learn how to access the current user's environment variables such as $HOME.

One contributor said that user.info contains the home directory, but I haven't found how to obtain that. Thank you.

These don't work: :-)

os.chdir("$HOME")
os.chdir("~")

os.chdir("$HOME")
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '$HOME'

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 16 '19 at 01:21

5

Use

os.chdir(os.path.expanduser("~"))

The function os.path.expanduser replaces the tilde with the user directory and works on Unix/Linux and Windows

answered Jul 16 '19 at 01:21

Michael Butscher

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 16 '19 at 01:18

1

$HOME and ~ are shell syntax that expands into the user's home directory, not actual directory names by themselves.

Use os.environ to access environment variables in Python:

os.chdir(os.environ['HOME'])

answered Jul 16 '19 at 01:18

Barmar

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PERFECT, exactly what I was looking for. Much thanks. I'll study os.environ more now. – user1107258 Jul 16 '19 at 01:21

How do I change the current working directory of a Python program to the user's home directory?

2 Answers2