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I've written a piece of code that interfaces with Postgres. It needs
to write a Postgres table to disk, which it does with the <COPY> com-
mand. That command requires the absolute file name of the file being
written to. Right now I've got it hard coded to the exact location
where I want it, but that's not very portable. Is there some way in C
to retrieve the absolute path name of the current directory, so that I
could use that in my code and therefore have my code function right no
matter where it's executed? Any information on this would be greatly
appreciated.

---Kevin Simonson

"You'll never get to heaven, or even to LA,
if you don't believe there's a way."
from _Why Not_

In article <. com>,
<> wrote:

>I've written a piece of code that interfaces with Postgres. It needs
>to write a Postgres table to disk, which it does with the <COPY> com-
>mand. That command requires the absolute file name of the file being
>written to. Right now I've got it hard coded to the exact location
>where I want it, but that's not very portable. Is there some way in C
>to retrieve the absolute path name of the current directory, so that I
>could use that in my code and therefore have my code function right no
>matter where it's executed? Any information on this would be greatly
>appreciated.

There's no portable way to do this in standard C: in fact, C itself
doesn't know anything at all about directories. But all operating
systems provide a way to do it. For example, unix systems have
getcwd() ("get current working directory") which is declared in
<unistd.h>.

-- Richard
--
"Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters
in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.

Thanks!

(Richard Tobin) wrote:

> In article <. com>,
> <> wrote:
>
> >Is there some way in C to retrieve the absolute path name of the
> >current directory,

> There's no portable way to do this in standard C: in fact, C itself
> doesn't know anything at all about directories. But all operating
> systems provide a way to do it.

All operating systems _where this is possible in the first place_. It is
not always possible; for example, under very early versions of MS-DOS,
there was no such thing as a directory. All common modern desktop OSes
have them, but I would not be surprised at all to learn of embedded ones
that have files, but no directories, and therefore no path names,
absolute or relative.

Richard

Richard Bos a écrit :
> (Richard Tobin) wrote:
>
>
>>In article <. com>,
>> <> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Is there some way in C to retrieve the absolute path name of the
>>>current directory,
>
>
>>There's no portable way to do this in standard C: in fact, C itself
>>doesn't know anything at all about directories. But all operating
>>systems provide a way to do it.
>
>
> All operating systems _where this is possible in the first place_. It is
> not always possible; for example, under very early versions of MS-DOS,
> there was no such thing as a directory. All common modern desktop OSes
> have them, but I would not be surprised at all to learn of embedded ones
> that have files, but no directories, and therefore no path names,
> absolute or relative.
>
> Richard

Nobody cares about those systems. If you would have read what the
original poster wrote, you would have seen the first sentence:

"I've written a piece of code that interfaces with Postgres."

It would be astounding that Postgres runs in an embedded OS with
no directories or under "early MSDOS" isn't it?

But at each question we have to know apparently how we make the
program portable to MSDOS systems without directories, or whatever.

Living in the past is a favorite passtime of people in this group
apparently.

jacob navia wrote:

> Richard Bos a écrit :
>> (Richard Tobin) wrote:

>> All operating systems _where this is possible in the first place_. It is
>> not always possible; for example, under very early versions of MS-DOS,
>> there was no such thing as a directory. All common modern desktop OSes
>> have them, but I would not be surprised at all to learn of embedded ones
>> that have files, but no directories, and therefore no path names,
>> absolute or relative.
>>
>> Richard
>
> Nobody cares about those systems.

I bet that's not true.

> If you would have read what the
> original poster wrote, you would have seen the first sentence:
>
> "I've written a piece of code that interfaces with Postgres."
>
> It would be astounding that Postgres runs in an embedded OS with
> no directories or under "early MSDOS" isn't it?

Doesn't matter -- /that/ question had already been answered.

> But at each question we have to know apparently how we make the
> program portable to MSDOS systems without directories, or whatever.

I think you're misreading the intention of the answer.

> Living in the past is a favorite passtime of people in this group
> apparently.

Some people have made money from "Living in the Past". It's not to
be sneezed at.

--
"Never ask that question!" Ambassador Kosh, /Babylon 5/

Hewlett-Packard Limited registered no:
registered office: Cain Road, Bracknell, Berks RG12 1HN 690597 England

Chris Dollin <> wrote:

> jacob navia wrote:
>
> > Richard Bos a écrit :
> >> (Richard Tobin) wrote:
>
> >> All operating systems _where this is possible in the first place_. It is
> >> not always possible; for example, under very early versions of MS-DOS,
> >> there was no such thing as a directory. All common modern desktop OSes
> >> have them, but I would not be surprised at all to learn of embedded ones
> >> that have files, but no directories, and therefore no path names,
> >> absolute or relative.
> >
> > Nobody cares about those systems.
>
> I bet that's not true.

Well, nobody who is anybody cares: obviously, because jacob does not
care, and jacob is the only person who is anybody, and his (lack of)
experience defines the universe.

> > But at each question we have to know apparently how we make the
> > program portable to MSDOS systems without directories, or whatever.
>
> I think you're misreading the intention of the answer.

Quite.

> > Living in the past is a favorite passtime of people in this group
> > apparently.
>
> Some people have made money from "Living in the Past". It's not to
> be sneezed at.

Jethro Tull, for example .

Richard

Richard Bos wrote:

>> Some people have made money from "Living in the Past". It's not to
>> be sneezed at.
>
> Jethro Tull, for example .

Shh. Someone might still fall into the trap.

--
"Who do you serve, and who do you trust?" /Crusade/

Hewlett-Packard Limited registered office: Cain Road, Bracknell,
registered no: 690597 England Berks RG12 1HN

In article <>,
Richard Bos <> wrote:

>> >Is there some way in C to retrieve the absolute path name of the
>> >current directory,

>> There's no portable way to do this in standard C: in fact, C itself
>> doesn't know anything at all about directories. But all operating
>> systems provide a way to do it.

>All operating systems _where this is possible in the first place_. It is
>not always possible; for example, under very early versions of MS-DOS,
>there was no such thing as a directory.

If you're going to be pedantic, it's equally true to say that such
systems have one directory. And the operating system certainly provides
a way to find out which of the one directories you're in, using the
following code:

In fact, CP/M (and presumably early MS-DOS, though I never used it)
had one directory per disk, and there was no doubt a way to find out
what the current disk was, which would be necessary to get the
equivalent of an "absolute path name".

-- Richard
--
"Consideration shall be given to the need for as many as 32 characters
in some alphabets" - X3.4, 1963.

On 11 Mai, 14:22, r...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl (Richard Bos) wrote:

> have them, but I would not be surprised at all to learn of embedded ones
> that have files, but no directories, and therefore no path names,
> absolute or relative.

The Oberon system had no paths.

There was only a large BTree and file names looked like
"myapp.mydocs.letter-written-on-11-may.txt" and there was an API to
retrieve all file names at and after a given prefix. So it worked very
much like a hierachical system.