What's the perfect (OS independent) way of storing filepaths ?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:20:06 +0000, Duncan Booth wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:40:32 +0000, Duncan Booth wrote:
>> 
>>> Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE-THIS-cybersource.com.au> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> In Linux, config files should go into:
>>>> 
>>>> ~/.<appname>/ or /etc/<appname>/
>>>> 
>>>> In Windows (which versions?) then should go into the Documents And
>>>> Settings folder, where ever that is.
>>>> 
>>>> There's no single string which can represent both of these
>>>> conventions!
>>> 
>>> The first of those should do nicely for both Linux and Windows:
>>> 
>>>>>> os.path.normpath(os.path.expanduser('~/.appname'))
>>> 'C:\\Documents and Settings\\Duncan\\.appname'
>> 
>> 
>> Except Windows users will be wondering why they have a directory
>> starting with '.' in their home directory. Dot to make files hidden is
>> not AFAIK supported by Windows.
>> 
> The leading dot doesn't make the files hidden on Windows, but there's no
> reason why you can't create files/folders with a leading dot and many
> programs do just that. On the machine I'm on right now, 'dir .*' shows
> me:
[snip]

And 75% [1] of average Windows users will either delete the file, move it 
to a more convenient[2] location, or edit the file name to remove the dot.

I'm not saying you can't use files with a leading period under Windows. 
You can name all your config files using Morse code if you want. I'm 
saying it breaks the expected Windows file location guidelines, and it 
displays a shameful lack of care by the programmer. Windows users are 
more forgiving of badly behaved programs than Macintosh users, but even 
so, it's pretty shoddy to ignore a platform's standard file locations. 
Unix/Linux coders would rightly be annoyed if some tool created a 
directory "/Program Files" instead of using the appropriate /bin 
directory. This is no different.





[1] Based on my experience of the typical Windows user. YMMV.

[2] And they are right to do so. Programs that dump config files and 
directories, hidden or not, in the top level of the user's home directory 
are incredibly rude. It may have been a Unix standard for as long as 
there has been a Unix, but it's still the programming equivalent of 
coming into somebody's house and throwing your tools all over their 
living room floor.



-- 
Steven