get path

I'm new to UNIX C programming and have a question. Is there a command in UNIX "C" that will get the current environment path?

Yes, there is. See help on getenv()

char *p_home;
p_home = getenv("HOME");
/*   Check for return value   */

I think the that getcwd ( ) would be a better function as per the thread initiator requirement. Its prototype is :
#include <unistd.h>
extern char *getcwd(char *buf, size_t size);
The getcwd() function returns a pointer to the current directory pathname.The value of size must be at least one greater than the length of the pathname to be returned.
If buf is not NULL, the pathname will be stored in the space pointed to by buf. If buf is a null pointer, getcwd() will obtain size bytes of space using malloc. In this case, the pointer returned by getcwd() may be used as the argument in a subsequent call to free().The getcwd() function returns NULL with errno set if size is not large enough, or if an error occurs in a lower-level function.