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From: Erich Schubert <erich@erich.xmldesign.de>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>
Subject: wishlist: tool for printing user's home directory
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Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 22:46:02 +0100
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Package: shellutils
Version: 2.0.11-2
Severity: wishlist

i'd like to have a tool for printing the home directory of a user
(real user / effective user / user passed on command line)
I've run across this need 3 times in shell scripting last week...
I wrote these scripts in perl then...

Maybe there is a simlar utility already in Debian, but i havn't found it and
everybody told me to awk /etc/passwd - but i'm running LDAP...

And i think such a tool belong's right next to "groups" and "id".

Might even be upstream-wishlist...

This surely isn't hard to write, basically just something like this:
(Sorry for the bad code, but this is the first C Program i ever wrote on my
own and havn't hacked some other's program ;)

-------
#include <pwd.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    struct passwd *user;

    if (argc <=1) {
        /* without parameters, get current user id's home */
        user=getpwuid(geteuid());
    } else if (strcmp(argv[1],"-r") == 0) {
        /* get real user id */
        user=getpwuid(getuid());
    } else if (strcmp(argv[1],"-h") == 0) {
        /* show help screen */
	printf("Usage: homedir [OPTION] [USERNAME]\n");
	printf("Print home directory of USERNAME, or the current user.\n\n");
	printf("  -r     print home of the real instead of effecive user\n");
	printf("  -h     display this help and exit\n");
        exit(0);
    } else {
        user=getpwnam(argv[1]);
    }
    if (user) {
	printf("%s\n",user->pw_dir);
    } else {
	fprintf(stderr, "Error: could not get home directory\n");
	exit(1);
    }
    exit(0);
}
-------

this lack's to course more detailed error messages and i18n/l10n...

Greetings,
Erich

-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux erich.xmldesign.de 2.4.2-ac2 #1 Fre Feb 23 13:48:55 CET 2001 i686

Versions of packages shellutils depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.2.2-1    GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  login                         20000902-3 System login tools