I'm currently writing a script to help automate the task of adding accounts to our web server. This script will obviously need to run as root, and at one point I need to create a symlink in the new user's home directory. I don't want to hardcode /home into the script, so I tried using ~$1 (tilde) with no luck. It seems that the tilde expansion is actually a feature of bash, and though the command will expand to "ln -s /www/newuser ~newuser/www", the tilde will not be expanded to "/home/", which causes ln to complain that there is no such directory as "~newuser". Is there any way to retrieve the location of a user's home directory without using the tilde, or trick bash into expanding the tilde into the proper path (usually /home/)?

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

You could grep and cut the passwd file:
grep "^rossy:" /etc/passwd| cut -d: -f6

However you may be able to achieve this without your script using hte /etc/skel directory. It depends on what you want to do.

Hi,
$HOME variable would server your purpose.

-- Dharmender Rai

david_ross:

Thanks, but I wanted to avoid grepping /etc/passwd... but if it's necessary, I guess I have no choice. I don't think /etc/skel could do what I need; every user needs a different (similar, but different) symlink.

dharmender_rai:

$HOME would involve su'ing to the new user. That's ugly, and would then involve su'ing back to root to complete the rest of the script.