Finding startup files

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-05-11, jeff elkins <jeffelkins at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I'm creating an app that relies on a configuration file at
> launch. The file will always exist in the app's installation
> directory,

That's the first decision you need to examine.  If you want
work on Unix platforms, that's not where configuration files go.
If you're talking about Windows, then all bets are off and you
can ignore the rest of this post.

> but I have no control over where that might be. 

Exactly.

> Is there an OS-independent way that I can instruct the app to
> look in it's home directory for startup files?

No.  That's not even the right place to look under Unix.  If
you want to do things the "right" way under Unix, you look in
places like

 /etc/<appname>
 /etc/<appname>/whatever
 /usr/local/etc/<appname>
 /usr/local/etc/<appname>/whatever

One of the above would be used for system-wide configuration
stuff.

 $HOME/.<appname>rc
 $HOME/.<appname>/whatever

One of the above would be used for user-specific configuration
 
> Right now, I'm hard coding the path, which won't work. 

-- 
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