File path questions

[jennybc]

Things that came up:

• The ambiguity about "home directory" on Windows.
  • path_home() vs path_home_r() (and their path_expand*() friends)
• What about an absolute that path that IS the same for everyone? I.e. what if we're all grabbing something from a network share?
  • This is much "safer" than "C:/path/that/ONLY/I have".
  • The main principle for finding a good approach is to centralize / abstract this as much as possible. Does the network path change every so often? It might be worth creating an internal package for the org or lab to make such paths. If the location changes, update the package and all existing scripts should work. An individual could implement something similar by storing the path to the network share in an env var or option; then build safer paths in scripts, relative to that.