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Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 21:29:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: Igor Pechtchanski <pechtcha AT cs DOT nyu DOT edu>
Reply-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Sven_K=F6hler?= <skoehler AT upb DOT de>
cc: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: "which" command does not expand "~" in path
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Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.61.0409262122350.630@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>
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On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Sven Köhler wrote:

> > > But is there any command that give's me the home for a given username?
> >
> > bash -c "echo ~username"
>
> Oh well, beside bash (and any other big programm called shell)
>
> > Or you could write one using the getpwnam() call (better yet, the
> > reentrant versions, getpwnam_r()), and submit it to, say, cygutils (since
> > sh-utils is no longer being actively developed).
>
> I just wondered how to write a "correct" shell-script that runs with /bin/sh,
> and it seems there is no way "shell-script"-way to figure out a  user's
> homedir.

You could try

awk -F: "/^username:/"'{print $6}' < /etc/passwd

(the pattern is in double quotes so that variable substitution can occur,
e.g., you could change "username" to "$1" in a shell script).
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor AT watson DOT ibm DOT com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski, Ph.D.
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing
whatever you think is worth doing."  -- Dr. Jubal Harshaw

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