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Asked: 2026-05-13T23:39:52+00:00

I’m trying to save a CFPropertyList to a location in the user’s home folder.

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I’m trying to save a CFPropertyList to a location in the user’s home folder. Using the code below I’m getting errorCode = -10 (unknown error).

CFURLRef fileURL = CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath(kCFAllocatorDefault, CFSTR("~/testfile.txt"),  kCFURLPOSIXPathStyle, false );  

SInt32 errorCode;
Boolean status = CFURLWriteDataAndPropertiesToResource(fileURL, xmlData, NULL, &errorCode);

If I change the path to something like “/testfile.txt” without the ‘~’ then everything works. How can one save a property list to the current user’s home folder? Must one obtain the user’s name first and include it in the path such as /users/toffler/testfile.txt?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Automatic ~ expansion is a feature of the shell.

    If you are using Cocoa/Foundation, you can use the NSString methods

    - (NSString *)stringByAbbreviatingWithTildeInPath;
- (NSString *)stringByExpandingTildeInPath;

    otherwise, you’ll have to write some code yourself to do this. Getting the user’s login name and constructing the path /Users/login-name/ is not the correct way to do this. (While most users will have their home directory here, some will not.)

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