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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T06:04:21+00:00

From the command line, I can get the home directory like this: ~/ How

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From the command line, I can get the home directory like this:

~/

How can I get the home directory inside my PHP CLI script?

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
echo realpath(~/);
?>
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Use $_SERVER['HOME']

    Edit:

    To make it complete, see what print_r($_SERVER)gave me, executed from the command line:

    Array
(
    [TERM_PROGRAM] => Apple_Terminal
    [TERM] => xterm-color
    [SHELL] => /bin/bash
    [TMPDIR] => /var/folders/Lb/LbowO2ALEX4JTK2MXxLGd++++TI/-Tmp-/
    [TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION] => 272
    [USER] => felix
    [COMMAND_MODE] => unix2003
    [__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING] => 0x1F5:0:0
    [PATH] =>/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/texbin:/usr/X11/bin
    [PWD] => /Users/felix/Desktop
    [LANG] => de_DE.UTF-8
    [SHLVL] => 1
    [HOME] => /Users/felix
    [LOGNAME] => felix
    [DISPLAY] => /tmp/launch-XIM6c8/:0
    [_] => ./test_php2
    [OLDPWD] => /Users/felix
    [PHP_SELF] => ./test_php2
    [SCRIPT_NAME] => ./test_php2
    [SCRIPT_FILENAME] => ./test_php2
    [PATH_TRANSLATED] => ./test_php2
    [DOCUMENT_ROOT] => 
    [REQUEST_TIME] => 1260658268
    [argv] => Array
      (
        [0] => ./test_php2
      )

    [argc] => 1
    )

    I hope I don’t expose relevant security information 😉

    Windows Compatibility

    Note that $_SERVER['HOME'] is not available on Windows. Instead, the variable is split into $_SERVER['HOMEDRIVE'] and $_SERVER['HOMEPATH'], meaning if you want both Unix-and-Windows compatibility, do:

    $homepath = $_SEVER['HOME'] ?? (/*windows compatibility: */$_SERVER['HOMEDRIVE'] . $_SERVER['HOMEPATH']);
// $homepath looks like /home/username or C:\Users\username
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