How to get proper hostname instead of NETBIOS name

Question

I'm using emacs 25.2.1 on Windows with spacemacs (0.200.9). I also start emacs as a service using emacsclientw.exe --daemon. I'm attempting to get the current host name using (system-name) as follows:

(defconst jp-hostname
  (car (split-string (system-name) "\\." t)))

Unfortunately, when I do this, the jp-hostname variable contains the NETBIOS name instead of the hostname. For example, my laptop's name is "jaundiced-outlook", but jp-hostname is set to "JAUNDICED-OUTLO".

Calling (system-name) after emacs is up and running returns what I would expect: "jaundiced-outlook".

By waiting until emacs is finished loading and executing the above code using eval-region, jp-hostname gets set correctly to "jaundiced-outlook".

Is there a reason for this behavior? Is there a way to get around this kind of thing?

Answer 1

Eventually, the only reliable way I found to resolve the issue (how do I get the host name, not the NETBIOS name) was to shell out to the hostname command:

(defconst jp-hostname
  ;; This should use the following line, but it doesn't work for some reason
  ;; So, instead, we resort to shelling out
  ;; (car (split-string (system-name) "\\." t))
  (string-trim (with-output-to-string
    (call-process "hostname" nil standard-output nil))))