File paths on a web server

[Brian Yennie]

Could you use AppleScript? That might get you out of the sandbox  
where the CGI is running. What is probably stopping you is that  
Apache typically is run by a different user than the current "logged  
in" user, for security purposes.

tell application "System Events"
	set username to the current user's name
	return username
end tell

> Hi All,
>
> I've run into this problem before and solved it with Ken Ray's help,
> but now (with Leopard) the old solution doesn't work.
>
> I need to find the name of the current user on the web server
> computer. The cgi stacks need to be able to find a file in the current
> user's public folder, but I can't get to it if I don't know the name
> of the user. I've tried my previous solution using the shell command
> "who", but although "who" works fine in Terminal, it doesn't return
> anything when used in a CGI script. I've also tried "whoami" and even
> specialFolderPath().
>
> Any ideas? I can't use a different file arrangement because that isn't
> mine to control.
>
> Cheers,
> Sarah

---
Brian Yennie