How to find the real user home directory using python?

I think os.path.expanduser(path) could be helpful.

On Unix and Windows, return the argument with an initial component of ~ or ~user replaced by that user‘s home directory.

On Unix, an initial ~ is replaced by the environment variable HOME if it is set; otherwise the current user’s home directory is looked up in the password directory through the built-in module pwd. An initial ~user is looked up directly in the password directory.

On Windows, HOME and USERPROFILE will be used if set, otherwise a combination of HOMEPATH and HOMEDRIVE will be used. An initial ~user is handled by stripping the last directory component from the created user path derived above.

If the expansion fails or if the path does not begin with a tilde, the path is returned unchanged.

So you could just do:

os.path.expanduser('~user')

from pathlib import Pathstr(Path.home())

works in Python 3.5 and above. Path.home() returns a Path object providing an API I find very useful.

I think os.path.expanduser(path) is the best answer to your question, but there's an alternative that may be worth mentioning in the Unix world: the pwd package. e.g.

import os, pwdpwd.getpwuid(os.getuid()).pw_dir