List home directory without absolute path

Question

I'm having problem with listing home directory of current user without knowing absolute path to it. I've tried with the following, but it doesn't work:

[root@blackbox source]# python
Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Dec  7 2011, 20:38:36)
[GCC 4.4.6 20110731 (Red Hat 4.4.6-3)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> os.listdir('/root')
['python', '.bashrc', '.viminfo']
>>> os.listdir('~')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '~'
>>>

Answer 1

You need to use the os.path.expanduser() function:

>>> import os.path
>>> os.path.expanduser('~')
'/home/username'

Answer 2

You could ask the Operation System like this:

>>> import os
>>> os.environ['HOME']
'/home/noctua'
>>> os.listdir(os.environ['HOME'])