How to insert the default user into a filepath python

Question

I have a code that makes a folder:

if not os.path.exists('C:\\Users\\MYNAME\\Documents\\Myfiles):
     os.chdir('C:\\Users\\MYNAME\\Documents')
     os.mkdir('Myfiles')

I want this to be able to run on any computer, so how can I get the default user without asking and doing something like:

DefaultUser = input('What is the default user for this PC?: ')
if not os.path.exists('C:\\Users\\' + DefaultUser + '\\Documents\\Myfiles'):
    os.chdir('C:\\Users\\' + DefaultUser + '\\Documents')
    os.mkdir('Myfiles')

EDIT: By default user, I mean the one currently running the program.

You can use [Path.home()](https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html#pathlib.Path.home) from pathlib — Maurice Meyer, Oct 30 '18 at 17:29

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 30 '18 at 17:32

You can try the following to first get the username using getpass and then use it in the path using a placeholder %s. I tried it on my Mac and it returned the correct username.

import getpass
Name = getpass.getuser()
print (Name) # To confirm that it gives the correct username

if not os.path.exists('C:\\Users\\%s\\Documents\\Myfiles' %Name):
    os.chdir('C:\\Users\\%s\\Documents' %Name)
    os.mkdir('Myfiles')

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 30 '18 at 17:34

Since you're already using os, make use of the expanduser() method in path:

import os
curdir = os.path.expanduser('~/Documents')
# 'C:\\Users\\me/Documents'
newdir = 'Myfiles'
if not os.path.exists(os.path.join(curdir, newdir)):
    os.chdir(curdir)
    os.mkdir(newdir)

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 30 '18 at 17:39

0

Since the answer is about the process owner

import os
import psutil

# get the PID
pid = os.getpid()

# get the username
username = psutil.Process(pid).username

Untested, but should work on Windows and Linux

answered Oct 30 '18 at 17:39

user3142459

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How to insert the default user into a filepath python

3 Answers3