I would suggest just using existing packages for supporting the XDG Basedir spec: Haskell: http://packages.debian.org/sid/libghc-xdg-basedir-dev C/C++: http://packages.debian.org/sid/libxdg-basedir-dev Python: http://packages.debian.org/sid/python-xdg -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise