This section lists Pathie’s methods for retrieval of system or user standard paths along with possible examples. It might serve as an overview if you don’t want to read the documentation of all those methods.
The Standard column denotes the standard the specified path was taken from under UNIX; Windows has no applicable standards it follows for its directory structure. The Type column specified whether this path varies on a per-user basis (User) or is a fixed system path that is the same for all users (System); Other means the path is unrelated to User information.
On Windows, several paths may share the same location. This is because Windows doesn’t have such a detailed filesystem layout structure as UNIX systems have. If your application needs to run on Windows also, you should be careful to avoid file naming conflicts in those directories.
The global paths given below for UNIX are those you’ll receive if you called Path::set_global_dir_default()
with LOCALPATH_NORMAL as its argument. You can also use LOCALPATH_LOCAL to instruct
the global_*_dir() methods to return the corresponding paths under the system-local
hierarchy (mostly /usr/local and /var/local) instead.
| Method | Standard | Type | Typical UNIX return value | Typical Windows return value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| appentries_dir() | XDG | User | /home/user/.local/share/applications | C:/Users/user/Start Menu |
| cache_dir() | XDG | User | /home/user/.cache | C:/Users/user/AppData/Local |
| config_dir() | XDG | User | /home/user/.config | C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming |
| data_dir() | XDG | User | /home/user/.local/share | C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming |
| desktop_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Desktop | C:/Users/user/Desktop |
| documents_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Documents | C:/Users/user/Documents |
| download_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Downloads | N/A |
| exe() | N/A | Other | /home/user/Downloads/software/bin/foo | C:/Users/user/Downloads/software/foo.exe |
| global_appentries_dir() | FHS | System | /usr/share/applications | C:/Users/All Users/Start Menu |
| global_cache_dir() | FHS | System | /var/cache | C:/Users/All Users/Application Data |
| global_config_dir() | FHS | System | /etc | C:/Windows/System32 |
| global_immutable_data_dir() | FHS | System | /usr/share | C:/Windows/System32 |
| global_mutable_data_dir() | FHS | System | /var/lib | C:/Users/All Users/Application Data |
| global_programs_dir() | FHS | System | /opt | C:/Program Files |
| global_runtime_dir() | FHS | System | /run or /var/run | C:/Temp |
| home() | FHS | User | /home/user | C:/Users/user |
| music_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Music | C:/Users/user/Music |
| pictures_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Pictures | C:/Users/user/Pictures |
| publicshare_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Public | C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/Network Shortcuts |
| pwd() | POSIX | Other | /home/user/Downloads/software | C:/Users/user/Downloads/software |
| runtime_dir() | XDG | User | /run/user/1000 | C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Temp |
| temp_dir() | FHS | System | /tmp | C:/Users/user/AppData/Local/Temp |
| templates_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Templates | C:/Users/user/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/Windows/Templates |
| videos_dir() | XDGU | User | /home/user/Videos | C:/Users/user/Videos |