Programming

Or why not have a look and see how other applications solve problems like this on UNIX?

Let application name="foo"

UNIX apps typically do the following....

1. check $HOME directory for directory called .foo and finds config in there, such as $HOME/.foo/foo.conf

2. check a package directory, eg /usr/pkg/etc/foo.conf or /opt/MYfoo/etc/foo.conf

3. check the gobals, /etc/foo.conf

4. use sensible defaults

5. have a wrapper script that does the setting up of environment before running the actually binary with exec, allows installation to code directory paths in a shell script outside of the binary.

NB, There is no portable way to determine the filename of a program at startup.

Those last suggestions of yours were really good. I had a look in the ~/ dir and ls -a showed a hidden directory for every program I have installed. When I checked in each they had funnily enough config files that as you said:

had package lists and sensible program defaults in them.

I think I'll copy that style of application launching.
Thanks for your patience, it has been really helpful for me.

Jason.