Why do I get different runtimepaths depending on which API I use?

I'm trying to run Neovim 0.8.1. on a Windows 11 environment.

My setup is really minimal:

I downloaded nvim-win64.zip (of version 0.8.1) from Neovim's releases page on Github.
Extracted it and moved it to a folder at C:\test\nvim-win64
Started up Neovim by executing C:\test\nvim-win64\bin\nvim.exe

Not using any custom config.

When inspecting my runtimepath, there are 2 ways of doing this:

Using :set runtimepath? (the Vimscript way). This gives me:

runtimepath=~\AppData\Local\nvim,~\AppData\Local\nvim-data\site,C:\test\nvim-win64\share\nvim\runtime,C:\test\nvim-win64\share\nvim\runtime\pack\dist\opt\matchit,C:\test\nvim-win64\lib\nvim,~\AppData\Local\nvim-data\site\after,~\AppData\Local\nvim\after

Using :lua print(vim.inspect(vim.api.nvim_list_runtime_paths())) (the Lua way). this gives me:

{ "C:\\test\\nvim-win64\\share\\nvim\\runtime", "C:\\test\\nvim-win64\\share\\nvim\\runtime\\pack\\dist\\opt\\matchit", "C:\\test\\nvim-win64\\lib\\nvim" }

As you can see, it seems like using the Lua way I'm missing the local config directories in my runtimepath (the ~\AppData\Local\* paths).

Why am I seeing this difference? This is blocking me from using XDG_CONFIG_HOME to use my own config that I typically use, because it seems like it does not get included in the nvim_list_runtime_paths list, but it does appear in :set runtimepath?.

Solution

My issue was that my employer had decided to put ( and ) characters in my %USERPROFILE% environment variable, which ended up breaking a bunch of stuff (including the list I got from nvim_list_runtime_paths).

Putting those characters in %USERPROFILE% is a bad idea for many reasons, so I moved all of my files and folders out of any (sub)directory in %USERPROFILE% and right in C:\.

I also had to define XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_STATE_HOME to point to a different location than the default location (which default within %USERPROFILE%).

This made all of my troubles go away!