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Under GNU General Public License
2012-05-24 03:46 @38.107.179.237 Crawled by CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)
File::HomeDir(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation File::HomeDir(3pm)
NAME
File::HomeDir - Find your home and other directories, on any platform
SYNOPSIS
use File::HomeDir;
# Modern Interface (Current User)
$home = File::HomeDir->my_home;
$desktop = File::HomeDir->my_desktop;
$docs = File::HomeDir->my_documents;
$music = File::HomeDir->my_music;
$pics = File::HomeDir->my_pictures;
$videos = File::HomeDir->my_videos;
$data = File::HomeDir->my_data;
# Modern Interface (Other Users)
$home = File::HomeDir->users_home('foo');
$desktop = File::HomeDir->users_desktop('foo');
$docs = File::HomeDir->users_documents('foo');
$music = File::HomeDir->users_music('foo');
$pics = File::HomeDir->users_pictures('foo');
$video = File::HomeDir->users_videos('foo');
$data = File::HomeDir->users_data('foo');
# Legacy Interfaces
print "My dir is ", home(), " and root's is ", home('root'), "\n";
print "My dir is $~{''} and root's is $~{root}\n";
# These both print the same thing, something like:
# "My dir is /home/user/mojo and root's is /"
DESCRIPTION
File::HomeDir is a module for dealing with issues relating to the location of directories
that are "owned" by a user, primarily your user, and to solve these issues consistently
across a wide variety of platforms.
Thus, a single API is presented that can find your resources on any platform.
This module provides two main interfaces.
The first is a modern File::Spec-style interface with a consistent OO API and different
implementation modules to support various platforms. You are strongly recommended to use
this interface.
The second interface is for legacy support of the original 0.07 interface that exported a
"home()" function by default and tied the "%~" variable.
It is generally not recommended that you use this interface, but due to back-compatibility
reasons they will remain supported until at least 2010.
After this date, the home() function will remain, but we will consider deprecating the
(namespace-polluting) "%~" tied hash, to be removed by 2015 (maintaining the general Perl
convention of a 10 year support period for legacy APIs potentially or actually in common
use).
Platform Neutrality
In the Unix world, many different types of data can be mixed together in your home
directory (although on some Unix platforms this is no longer the case, particularly for
"desktop"-oriented platforms).
On some non-Unix platforms, seperate directories are allocated for different types of data
and have been for a long time.
When writing applications on top of File::HomeDir, you should thus always try to use the
most specific method you can. User documents should be saved in "my_documents", data that
supports an application but isn't normally editing by the user directory should go into
"my_data".
On platforms that do not make any distinction, all these different methods will harmlessly
degrade to the main home directory, but on platforms that care File::HomeDir will always
try to Do The Right Thing(tm).
METHODS
Two types of methods are provided. The "my_method" series of methods for finding resources
for the current user, and the "users_method" (read as "user's method") series for finding
resources for arbitrary users.
This split is necesary, as on most platforms it is much easier to find information about
the current user compared to other users, and indeed on a number you cannot find out
information such as "users_desktop" at all, due to security restrictions.
All methods will double check (using a "-d" test) that a directory actually exists before
returning it, so you may trust in the values that are returned (subject to the usual
caveats of race conditions of directories being deleted at the moment between a directory
being returned and you using it).
However, because in some cases platforms may not support the concept of home directories
at all, any method may return "undef" (both in scalar and list context) to indicate that
there is no matching directory on the system.
For example, most untrusted 'nobody'-type users do not have a home directory. So any
modules that are used in a CGI application that at some level of recursion use your code,
will result in calls to File::HomeDir returning undef, even for a basic home() call.
my_home
The "my_home" method takes no arguments and returns the main home/profile directory for
the current user.
If the distinction is important to you, the term "current" refers to the real user, and
not the effective user.
This is also the case for all of the other "my" methods.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a home
directory, or dies on error.
my_desktop
The "my_desktop" method takes no arguments and returns the "desktop" directory for the
current user.
Due to the diversity and complexity of implementions required to deal with implementing
the required functionality fully and completely, for the moment "my_desktop" is not going
to be implemented.
That said, I am extremely interested in code to implement "my_desktop" on Unix, as long as
it is capable of dealing (as the Windows implementation does) with internationalisation.
It should also avoid false positive results by making sure it only returns the appropriate
directories for the appropriate platforms.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a
desktop directory, or dies on error.
my_documents
The "my_documents" method takes no arguments and returns the directory (for the current
user) where the user's documents are stored.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a
documents directory, or dies on error.
my_music
The "my_music" method takes no arguments and returns the directory where the current
user's music is stored.
No bias is made to any particular music type or music program, rather the concept of a
directory to hold the user's music is made at the level of the underlying operating system
or (at least) desktop environment.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a
suitable directory, or dies on error.
my_pictures
The "my_pictures" method takes no arguments and returns the directory where the current
user's pictures are stored.
No bias is made to any particular picture type or picture program, rather the concept of a
directory to hold the user's pictures is made at the level of the underlying operating
system or (at least) desktop environment.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a
suitable directory, or dies on error.
my_videos
The "my_videos" method takes no arguments and returns the directory where the current
user's videos are stored.
No bias is made to any particular video type or video program, rather the concept of a
directory to hold the user's videos is made at the level of the underlying operating
system or (at least) desktop environment.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a
suitable directory, or dies on error.
my_data
The "my_data" method takes no arguments and returns the directory where local applications
should stored their internal data for the current user.
Generally an application would create a subdirectory such as ".foo", beneath this
directory, and store its data there. By creating your directory this way, you get an
accurate result on the maximum number of platforms.
For example, on Unix you get "~/.foo" and on Win32 you get "~/Local Settings/Application
Data/.foo"
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if the current user does not have a data
directory, or dies on error.
users_home
$home = File::HomeDir->users_home('foo');
The "users_home" method takes a single param and is used to locate the parent home/profile
directory for an identified user on the system.
While most of the time this identifier would be some form of user name, it is permitted to
vary per-platform to support user ids or UUIDs as applicable for that platform.
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if that user does not have a home
directory, or dies on error.
users_documents
$docs = File::HomeDir->users_documents('foo');
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if that user does not have a documents
directory, or dies on error.
users_data
$data = File::HomeDir->users_data('foo');
Returns the directory path as a string, "undef" if that user does not have a data
directory, or dies on error.
FUNCTIONS
home
use File::HomeDir;
$home = home();
$home = home('foo');
$home = File::HomeDir::home();
$home = File::HomeDir::home('foo');
The "home" function is exported by default and is provided for compatibility with legacy
applications. In new applications, you should use the newer method-based interface above.
Returns the directory path to a named user's home/profile directory.
If provided no param, returns the directory path to the current user's home/profile
directory.
TIED INTERFACE
%~
$home = $~{""};
$home = $~{undef};
$home = $~{$user};
$home = $~{username};
print "... $~{''} ...";
print "... $~{$user} ...";
print "... $~{username} ...";
This calls "home($user)" or "home('username')" -- except that if you ask for $~{some_user}
and there is no such user, it will die.
Note that this is especially useful in double-quotish strings, like:
print "Jojo's .newsrc is ", -s "$~{jojo}/.newsrc", "b long!\n";
# (helpfully dies if there is no user 'jojo')
If you want to avoid the fatal errors, first test the value of "home('jojo')", which will
return undef (instead of dying) in case of there being no such user.
Note, however, that if the hash key is "" or undef (whether thru being a literal "", or a
scalar whose value is empty-string or undef), then this returns zero-argument "home()",
i.e., your home directory:
Further, please note that because the "%~" hash compulsorily modifies a hash outside of
it's namespace, and presents an overly simplistic approach to home directories, it is
likely to ultimately be removed.
The interface is currently expected to be formally deprecated from 2010 (but no earlier)
and removed from 2015 (but no earlier). If very heavy use is found in the wild, these
plans may be pushed back.
TO DO
o Become generally clearer on situations in which a user might not have a particular
resource.
o Add more granularity to Unix, and add support to VMS and other esoteric platforms, so
we can consider going core.
o Add consistent support for users_* methods
SUPPORT
This module is stored in an Open Repository at the following address.
<http://svn.ali.as/cpan/trunk/File-HomeDir>
Write access to the repository is made available automatically to any published CPAN
author, and to most other volunteers on request.
If you are able to submit your bug report in the form of new (failing) unit tests, or can
apply your fix directly instead of submitting a patch, you are strongly encouraged to do
so as the author currently maintains over 100 modules and it can take some time to deal
with non-Critical bug reports or patches.
This will guarantee that your issue will be addressed in the next release of the module.
If you cannot provide a direct test or fix, or don't have time to do so, then regular bug
reports are still accepted and appreciated via the CPAN bug tracker.
<http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=File-HomeDir>
For other issues, for commercial enhancement or support, or to have your write access
enabled for the repository, contact the author at the email address above.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The biggest acknowledgement must go to Chris Nandor, who wielded his legendary Mac-fu and
turned my initial fairly ordinary Darwin implementation into something that actually
worked properly everywhere, and then donated a Mac OS X license to allow it to be
maintained properly.
AUTHORS
Adam Kennedy <adamk AT cpan.org>
Sean M. Burke <sburke AT cpan.org>
Chris Nandor <cnandor AT cpan.org>
Stephen Steneker <stennie AT cpan.org>
SEE ALSO
File::ShareDir, File::HomeDir::Win32 (legacy)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2005 - 2009 Adam Kennedy.
Some parts copyright 2000 Sean M. Burke.
Some parts copyright 2006 Chris Nandor.
Some parts copyright 2006 Stephen Steneker.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as Perl itself.
The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.
perl v5.10.0 2009-03-27 File::HomeDir(3pm)
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On Apache
Under GNU General Public License
2012-05-24 03:46 @38.107.179.237 Crawled by CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)