Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Xah Lee]

in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
“c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
but i was expecting it to point to:
“c:/Users/xah/”.

can anyone know why? Is this just a emacsW32 quirk or is this supposed
to be that way? Is this just a Windows env var that i didn't set, or
is it some emacs setup? (am not familiar with windows env var or
cmd.exe)

am asking because i have many init files and elisp functions that take
a path, and on unix ~ is user home root.

thanks.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[B. T. Raven]

Xah Lee wrote:
> in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
> “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
> but i was expecting it to point to:
> “c:/Users/xah/”.
> 
> can anyone know why? Is this just a emacsW32 quirk or is this supposed
> to be that way? Is this just a Windows env var that i didn't set, or
> is it some emacs setup? (am not familiar with windows env var or
> cmd.exe)
> 
> am asking because i have many init files and elisp functions that take
> a path, and on unix ~ is user home root.
> 
> thanks.
> 
>   Xah
> ∑ http://xahlee.org/
> 
> ☄

You can go to Control panel / System / Advanced / Environment Variables
and edit the HOME variable to make it C:\Users\xah

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Lennart Borgman]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 9:30 PM, B. T. Raven<nihil@nihilo.net> wrote:
> Xah Lee wrote:
>>
>> in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
>> “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
>> but i was expecting it to point to:
>> “c:/Users/xah/”.
>>
>> can anyone know why? Is this just a emacsW32 quirk or is this supposed
>> to be that way? Is this just a Windows env var that i didn't set, or
>> is it some emacs setup? (am not familiar with windows env var or
>> cmd.exe)
>>
>> am asking because i have many init files and elisp functions that take
>> a path, and on unix ~ is user home root.

It should be on Windows too. Xah, could you please download the
unpatched version and see if you get the same problem there? I am not
aware of that I have done something special in Emacs+EmacsW32, but
just in case...


>> thanks.
>>
>>  Xah
>> ∑ http://xahlee.org/
>>
>> ☄
>
> You can go to Control panel / System / Advanced / Environment Variables
> and edit the HOME variable to make it C:\Users\xah
>

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
> Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 10:52:53 -0700 (PDT)
> 
> in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
> “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
> but i was expecting it to point to:
> “c:/Users/xah/”.

It is supposed to point by default to whatever CSIDL_APPDATA is set to
on that machine.  That is, to the `Application Data' subdirectory of
your user profile directory.  Setting HOME in the environment
overrides that.  If Emacs does not behave like that, it's a bug that
should be reported.

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Xah Lee]

On Jun 5, 6:12 pm, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
> > From: Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com>
> > Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
> > Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 10:52:53 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
> > “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
> > but i was expecting it to point to:
> > “c:/Users/xah/”.
>
> It is supposed to point by default to whatever CSIDL_APPDATA is set to
> on that machine.  That is, to the `Application Data' subdirectory of
> your user profile directory.  Setting HOME in the environment
> overrides that.  If Emacs does not behave like that, it's a bug that
> should be reported.

Thanks all.

Setting Windows's env var HOME to c:\Users\xah helped. However, it
seems that when emacs starts as server/client, it still loads from “c:/
Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”.

I vaguely recall similar question asked here recently.

Am not familiar with server/client feature of emacs 23 yet... in
particular, how can i make it so that emacs just have one single dir
for the init files? (or if i should try to do that at all?)

Thanks.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Lennart Borgman]

On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Xah Lee<xahlee@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 5, 6:12 pm, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
>> > From: Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com>
>> > Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
>> > Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 10:52:53 -0700 (PDT)
>>
>> > in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
>> > “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
>> > but i was expecting it to point to:
>> > “c:/Users/xah/”.
>>
>> It is supposed to point by default to whatever CSIDL_APPDATA is set to
>> on that machine.  That is, to the `Application Data' subdirectory of
>> your user profile directory.  Setting HOME in the environment
>> overrides that.  If Emacs does not behave like that, it's a bug that
>> should be reported.
>
> Thanks all.
>
> Setting Windows's env var HOME to c:\Users\xah helped. However, it
> seems that when emacs starts as server/client, it still loads from “c:/
> Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”.

It should work the same. Perhaps you need to restart your pc?

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Xah Lee]

On Jun 7, 2:19 am, Lennart Borgman <lennart.borg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 6, 2009 at 3:00 PM, Xah Lee<xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Jun 5, 6:12 pm, Eli Zaretskii <e...@gnu.org> wrote:
> >> > From: Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com>
> >> > Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs
> >> > Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 10:52:53 -0700 (PDT)
>
> >> > in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
> >> > “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
> >> > but i was expecting it to point to:
> >> > “c:/Users/xah/”.
>
> >> It is supposed to point by default to whatever CSIDL_APPDATA is set to
> >> on that machine.  That is, to the `Application Data' subdirectory of
> >> your user profile directory.  Setting HOME in the environment
> >> overrides that.  If Emacs does not behave like that, it's a bug that
> >> should be reported.
>
> > Thanks all.
>
> > Setting Windows's env var HOME to c:\Users\xah helped. However, it
> > seems that when emacs starts as server/client, it still loads from “c:/
> > Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”.
>
> It should work the same. Perhaps you need to restart your pc?

restart Windows took care of it. Thannks Len.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄

Re: Emacs on Windows, isn't ~ supposed to be home dir?

[Jason Rumney]

On Jun 6, 1:52 am, Xah Lee <xah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> in emacsW32 on Windows,  “~/” points to
> “c:/Users/xah/AppData/Roaming/”
> but i was expecting it to point to:
> “c:/Users/xah/”.

c:\Users\xah is not guaranteed to be writable by the user xah. The
directory pointed to by Windows system variable CSIDL_APPDATA is.