GNU Info

(libc.info)Tilde Expansion

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Details of Tilde Expansion
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   It's a standard part of shell syntax that you can use `~' at the
beginning of a file name to stand for your own home directory.  You can
use `~USER' to stand for USER's home directory.

   "Tilde expansion" is the process of converting these abbreviations
to the directory names that they stand for.

   Tilde expansion applies to the `~' plus all following characters up
to whitespace or a slash.  It takes place only at the beginning of a
word, and only if none of the characters to be transformed is quoted in
any way.

   Plain `~' uses the value of the environment variable `HOME' as the
proper home directory name.  `~' followed by a user name uses
`getpwname' to look up that user in the user database, and uses
whatever directory is recorded there.  Thus, `~' followed by your own
name can give different results from plain `~', if the value of `HOME'
is not really your home directory.