expand file names that have environment variables in their path

Question

What\'s the best way to expand

${MyPath}/filename.txt to /home/user/filename.txt

or

%MyPath%/filename.txt to c:\\Document         


        

Answer 1

On Windows, you can use ExpandEnvironmentStrings. Not sure about a Unix equivalent yet.

Answer 2

Within the C/C++ language, here is what I do to resolve environmental variables under Unix. The fs_parm pointer would contain the filespec (or text) of possible environmental variables to be expanded. The space that wrkSpc points to must be MAX_PATH+60 chars long. The double quotes in the echo string are to prevent the wild cards from being processed. Most default shells should be able to handle this.

   FILE *fp1;

   sprintf(wrkSpc, "echo \"%s\" 2>/dev/null", fs_parm);
   if ((fp1 = popen(wrkSpc, "r")) == NULL || /* do echo cmd     */
       fgets(wrkSpc, MAX_NAME, fp1) == NULL)/* Get echo results */
   {                        /* open/get pipe failed             */
     pclose(fp1);           /* close pipe                       */
     return (P_ERROR);      /* pipe function failed             */
   }
   pclose(fp1);             /* close pipe                       */
   wrkSpc[strlen(wrkSpc)-1] = '\0';/* remove newline            */

For MS Windows, use the ExpandEnvironmentStrings() function.

Answer 3

Using Qt, this works for me:

#include <QString>
#include <QRegExp>

QString expand_environment_variables( QString s )
{
    QString r(s);
    QRegExp env_var("\\$([A-Za-z0-9_]+)");
    int i;

    while((i = env_var.indexIn(r)) != -1) {
        QByteArray value(qgetenv(env_var.cap(1).toLatin1().data()));
        if(value.size() > 0) {
            r.remove(i, env_var.matchedLength());
            r.insert(i, value);
        } else
            break;
    }
    return r;
}

expand_environment_variables(QString("$HOME/.myconfigfile")); yields /home/martin/.myconfigfile (It also works with nested expansions)

Answer 4

Simple and portable:

#include <cstdlib>
#include <string>

static std::string expand_environment_variables( const std::string &s ) {
    if( s.find( "${" ) == std::string::npos ) return s;

    std::string pre  = s.substr( 0, s.find( "${" ) );
    std::string post = s.substr( s.find( "${" ) + 2 );

    if( post.find( '}' ) == std::string::npos ) return s;

    std::string variable = post.substr( 0, post.find( '}' ) );
    std::string value    = "";

    post = post.substr( post.find( '}' ) + 1 );

    const *v = getenv( variable.c_str() );
    if( v != NULL ) value = std::string( v );

    return expand_environment_variables( pre + value + post );
}

expand_environment_variables( "${HOME}/.myconfigfile" ); yields /home/joe/.myconfigfile

Answer 5

If you have the luxury of using C++11, then regular expressions are quite handy. I wrote a version for updating in place and a declarative version.

#include <string>
#include <regex>

// Update the input string.
void autoExpandEnvironmentVariables( std::string & text ) {
    static std::regex env( "\\$\\{([^}]+)\\}" );
    std::smatch match;
    while ( std::regex_search( text, match, env ) ) {
        const char * s = getenv( match[1].str().c_str() );
        const std::string var( s == NULL ? "" : s );
        text.replace( match[0].first, match[0].second, var );
    }
}

// Leave input alone and return new string.
std::string expandEnvironmentVariables( const std::string & input ) {
    std::string text = input;
    autoExpandEnvironmentVariables( text );
    return text;
}

An advantage of this approach is that it can be adapted easily to cope with syntactic variations and deal with wide strings too. (Compiled and tested using Clang on OS X with the flag -std=c++0x)

Answer 6

This is what I use:

const unsigned short expandEnvVars(std::string& original)
{
    const boost::regex envscan("%([0-9A-Za-z\\/]*)%");
    const boost::sregex_iterator end;
    typedef std::list<std::tuple<const std::string,const std::string>> t2StrLst;
    t2StrLst replacements;
    for (boost::sregex_iterator rit(original.begin(), original.end(), envscan); rit != end; ++rit)
        replacements.push_back(std::make_pair((*rit)[0],(*rit)[1]));
    unsigned short cnt = 0;
    for (t2StrLst::const_iterator lit = replacements.begin(); lit != replacements.end(); ++lit)
    {
        const char* expanded = std::getenv(std::get<1>(*lit).c_str());
        if (expanded == NULL)
            continue;
        boost::replace_all(original, std::get<0>(*lit), expanded);
        cnt++;
    }
    return cnt;
}