Home/ Questions/Q 5947493
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-22T16:58:18+00:00

Came across this situation recently – I have an environment variable for a directory

  • 0

Came across this situation recently – I have an environment variable for a directory path like so:

var fooDir = process.env.FOO_DIR;

and I want to make sure this directory exists with a synchronous mkdir (at some point later):

fs.mkdirSync(fooDir, mode);

however if the user has supplied the environment variable via a realtive ~/ path node cannot resolve it

export FOO_DIR='~/foodir'

is there a way in node to resolve this without invoking a child process exec call to the actual shell? currently my solution is to do a replace myself like so:

fooDir = fooDir.replace(/^~\//, process.env.HOME + '/');

just curious if someone has a better solution.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You have it right: ~ is expanded by the shell, not the OS, just like *. None of the C file functions that node.js wraps handle ~ either, and if you want this you have to do the replacement yourself, just as you’ve shown. I’ve done this myself in C when supporting config files that allow relative file paths.

    However, you should probably handle the case where HOME isn’t defined; I believe this happens with non-interaction logins with bash, for example, and the user could always choose to unset it.

    • 0