What is a cross-platform way to get the home directory?

You want to use os.path.expanduser.
This will ensure it works on all platforms:

from os.path import expanduser
home = expanduser("~")

If you're on Python 3.5+ you can use pathlib.Path.home():

from pathlib import Path
home = str(Path.home())

But it's usually better not to convert Path.home() to string. It's more natural to use this way:

with open(Path.home() / ".ssh" / "known_hosts") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()

I found that pathlib module also supports this.

from pathlib import Path
>>> Path.home()
WindowsPath('C:/Users/XXX')

I know this is an old thread, but I recently needed this for a large scale project (Python 3.8). It had to work on any mainstream OS, so therefore I went with the solution @Max wrote in the comments.

Code:

import os
print(os.path.expanduser("~"))

Output Windows:

PS C:\Python> & C:/Python38/python.exe c:/Python/test.py
C:\Users\mXXXXX

Output Linux (Ubuntu):

rxxx@xx:/mnt/c/Python$ python3 test.py
/home/rxxx

I also tested it on Python 2.7.17 and that works too.

This can be done using pathlib, which is part of the standard library, and treats paths as objects with methods, instead of strings.

• Path.expanduser()
• Path.home()

from pathlib import Path

home: str = str(Path('~').expanduser())