path to executable

marijnh · 2004-09-20T13:51:03

I currently have the following problem - I have a program that requires an init file, say 'init.scm' to run. This file is in the same dir as the executable (later it might end up in a different dir, but its position relative to the executable will be fixed, say '../lib/init.scm'). Currently I am just opening this file as 'init.scm' and praying that it will work. When the program is run as './program' it is okay, but as soon as it is run from another dir ('programdir/program') it obviously can not find its init file. Is there a way to find the path to the executable in a convenient way on unix? Something that also works on win32 would be great but it appears that on windows it already normal for programs to have to be run with the 'current dir' set to the program directory. Now I could parse argv[0], but this does not always work at all (for example if the program was invoked through a link to it).

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Started by marijnh September 16, 2004 04:03 AM

9 comments, last by C-Junkie 19 years, 11 months ago

C-Junkie

1,099

September 20, 2004 01:51 PM

Another common method is to use environment variables.

Your program checks to see if MYPROGRAM_PREFIX_DIR is set, and if so uses that, otherwise it uses the hardcoded path.

then you can just 'export MY_PROGRAM_PREFIX_DIR=/home/mine/devel/myprogram/' and run normally.