Re: $HOME default on w32

[Jason Rumney]

Stefan <address@hidden> writes:

> It seems that on w32, if HOME is not defined we default it to C:/.
> Wouldn't it make more sense to default it to $USERPOFILE (if set)
> which on XP seems to typically point to C:/Documents and
> Files/<user> which is about as close to a "home directory" as it gets?

The thought has occured to me in the past.

We'd need to make sure that existing users who have Emacs related
files in C:\ are accounted for. We could perhaps have the installer
offer to move their files to $USERPROFILE, but do we know the full set
of files we might have to move (including files for external tools
that inherit the Emacs process environment when run from Emacs)?

The other (easier and hopefully less error prone) option is to check
at startup if c:\.emacs exists when defaulting HOME. Is it realistic
to expect that a user has no other files in HOME that would be
affected if .emacs does not yet exist?