Wrong path is used in Windows when %HOMEDRIVE% points to other drive

[guntern]

Description

This issue is related to windows. I am currently running Windows 11 23H2.

In our company the environment variables %HOMEDRIVE% and %HOMEPATH% do not point to C:\Users\username, but to a network share. This only happens if the notebook is started within the company. If it is started without connection to the company network those variables point to the "normal" location C:\Users\username.

If I now open neovim inside a directory within C:\Users\username, I can use the file browser and also telescope in general to navigate around in files within this directory or below. This is as expected.

However, if I use the filebrowser plugin to navigate up one level and search for files there (e.g. for reference), it tries to open the file with a full path. But the beginning of said path is not C:\Users\username anymore, but whatever is provided by %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%. But the file does not exist there and an empty buffer is opened.

Why is this happening? And how could I solve it within neovim?

I made a test and manually set the two environment variables in the terminal prior to opening neovim. In this situation it is working as expected. But I would prefer to have a neovim solution instead of messing around with the environment variables, which could have unintended side effects.

Neovim version

NVIM v0.9.5
Build type: RelWithDebInfo
LuaJIT 2.1.1703942320

Operating system and version

Windows 11 23H2

Steps to reproduce

1. Have %HOMEDRIVE% and %HOMEPATH% not point to C:\Users\username
2. open neovim inside a directory within C:\Users\username, e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\projectA
3. use the file explorer plugin and try to open a file outside of this directory, e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\projectB\README.md

Expected behavior

The file should be opened

Actual behavior

The file is tried to be loaded from %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH\Documents\projectB\README.md, which does not exist.

Minimal config

local root = vim.fn.fnamemodify("./.repro", ":p")

-- set stdpaths to use .repro
for _, name in ipairs({ "config", "data", "state", "cache" }) do
  vim.env[("XDG_%s_HOME"):format(name:upper())] = root .. "/" .. name
end

-- bootstrap lazy
local lazypath = root .. "/plugins/lazy.nvim"
if not vim.loop.fs_stat(lazypath) then
  vim.fn.system({
    "git",
    "clone",
    "--filter=blob:none",
    "https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim.git",
    lazypath,
  })
end
vim.opt.runtimepath:prepend(lazypath)

-- install plugins
local plugins = {
  {
    "nvim-telescope/telescope-file-browser.nvim",
    dependencies = {
      "nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim",
      "nvim-lua/plenary.nvim",
    },
    config = function()
      require("telescope").setup({})
      require("telescope").load_extension("file_browser")
    end,
  },
}

require("lazy").setup(plugins, {
  root = root .. "/plugins",
})