How do I get Vim home directory?

Question

I wanted to set the VIMHOME variable this way (common to Windows and Linux),

let $VIMHOME=expand("%:p")."/..",

so that VIMHOME is "~/.vim" in Linux or "path/to/vimfiles" in Windows.

I put this in a var.vim file and placed this in the plugin directory. It loads properly, but VIMHOME is set only to "./..".

How do I get the full path of a file using expand?

Is there an easy way to set VIMHOME?

Edit: I changed the expression to:

let $VIMHOME=expand("<sfile>:p:h")

Now, VIMHOME is set to "~/.vim/plugin" in Linux.

My requirement is setting VIMHOME to "~/.vim" or "path/to/vimfiles". But,

let $VIMHOME=expand("<sfile>:p:h")
let $VIMHOME=expand("$VIMHOME:p:h")

is not working.

How can I resolve this?

Answer 1

Put this in your var.vim plugin file:

let $VIMHOME=expand('<sfile>:p:h:h')

% in expand will refer to the file being edited (i.e. the pathname given on the command line). <sfile> will refer to the file being ‘sourced’ (i.e. the plugin or startup file that is active when the expansion is made).

The :p modifier makes the pathname absolute and the :h suffix drops the last pathname component (i.e. the filename in this case).

Answer 2

This is what I was looking for,

if has('win32') || has ('win64')
    let $VIMHOME = $VIM."/vimfiles"
else
    let $VIMHOME = $HOME."/.vim"
endif