How do I find out the system temporary directory?

Question

I'm testing an app that uses the System temp Directory. Inside of the app, there is some call to a Cocoa function to query this. Is there a way for me to query for this directory name outside of having to write a Cocoa app of my own? Possibly a command that I can issue in Terminal?

Answer 1

env

Just type this command into Terminal. With zero arguments it'll print the names and values of variables in the environment.

Alternative with a bit more typing:

echo $TMPDIR

Answer 2

OS X has Python pre-installed, though not necessarily a fresh Python; but this is not cutting-edge stuff.

So:

Open a terminal

cat > hack.py
import tempfile
print tempfile.gettempdir()
^D
python hack.py

Credit to nosklo