Q221206 BUG: System.getProperty("user.home") Returns Java Home Directory
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft® Visual J++®, version 6.0
- Microsoft® virtual machine (Microsoft VM)
SYMPTOMS
According to the documentation, System.getProperty("user.home") should return a String containing the user's home directory. Instead, the Microsoft VM returns the Java home directory, which is also returned by a call to System.getProperty("java.home").
RESOLUTION
While there are no known pure Java workarounds, there are a couple of things to try using Win32® code. To get the user's home directory, you could do the following:
- Use the USERPROFILE environment variable in Microsoft® Windows NT® to determine the user's home directory by making a J/Direct call to the Win32 API function GetEnvironmentVariable (For Microsoft® Windows® 9x users, require the user to set USERPROFILE on boot.)
- Use Win32's GetWindowsDirectory and WFC's getUserName to find the user's home directory.
- Use WFC's getUserName method to create a directory under "C:\A_KNOWN_DIRECTORY\[username]".
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed this to be a bug in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.
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