Finds user's home directory with dscl (Issue #73)

[canalnoises]

Adds compatibility for users that have their home directory in a non-standard location.

[ygini]

Hello

Thanks for this commit but this way of doing things will break if the user home folder is /Volumes/Users HD/Users/ygi.

Eventually using ~ygi/Library… should be a better solution, can you try on your setup and check if it works (all my setup with non standard home folder are gone now).

Thanks

[ygini]

If the NFSHomeDirectory is set to /Volumes/Users HD/Users/ygi the awk command will only return /Volumes/Users.

[canalnoises]

Oh, good catch. I'll do some testing and resubmit.

[elyscape]

@canalnoises You could do this:

homedir="$(/usr/bin/dscl -plist . read "/Users/${loggedInUser}" NFSHomeDirectory | /usr/bin/xpath -q -e '//key[text()="dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory"][1]/following-sibling::array[1]/string[1]/text()')"

Explanation of the parts follows.

/usr/bin/dscl -plist . read "/Users/${loggedInUser}" NFSHomeDirectory

This will output a plist that looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory</key>
	<array>
		<string>/Volumes/Users HD/Users/ygi</string>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

We want to get the first/only value of dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory, so we pass it into xpath with the following query:

//key[text()="dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory"][1]/following-sibling::array[1]/string[1]/text()

Breaking the query down:

//key[text()="dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory"][1]

This selects the first <key> element whose content is dsAttrTypeStandard:NFSHomeDirectory.

/following-sibling::array[1]

This selects the first <array> element that follows the selected <key> element.

/string[1]/text()

This returns the content of the first <string> element that descends from the selected <array> element.

[elyscape]

Alternatively, you could do this:

homeDir="$(/usr/bin/dscl . read "/Users/${loggedInUser}" NFSHomeDirectory | /usr/bin/sed 's/^NFSHomeDirectory: //')"

Whichever you do, you should put quotes around both the $() and the userpath, in case either the result or the userpath contains spaces.