Originally Posted By: alternaut
The same caveat applies to the contents of the $TMPDIR locations, assuming I located them correctly and comprehensively (Terminal lists a path to T rather than C folder on echo $TMPDIR).

That's what the /../ in "$TMPDIR"/../C is for. It backs up over the T and replaces it with a C.

You can get TMPDIR, CACHEDIR, and their common parent folder directly from

getconf DARWIN_USER_TEMP_DIR
getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR
getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR

but only TMPDIR is automatically set up for you. How these three folders are related depends on the OS version. On Snow Leopard the subfolders are -Caches- and -Temp- instead of C and T. I knew you were on Yosemite, so I used the Yosemite scheme. Otherwise I would have told you to cd "$(getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR)".