Home directory location

Where a user's home directory is located varies from platform to platform and among the users on a single computer. But the actual location of the home directory is available through special environment variables:

• Unix/Linux

  $HOME

• Windows

  %USERPROFILE%

• Cygwin

  $USERPROFILE

In order to find out where these environment variables actually point to, do the following:

• on Unix/Linux, open a terminal and type the following command

  echo $HOME

• on Windows, open a command-prompt and type the following command

  echo %USERPROFILE%

• on Cygwin, open a bash and type the following command

  echo $USERPROFILE