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From: rrr@u02.svl.cdc.com (Rich Ragan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: '~' in file names
Message-ID: <30953@shamash.cdc.com>
Date: 28 Feb 91 21:00:01 GMT
References: <1991Feb28.151019.22944@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Sender: usenet@shamash.cdc.com
Reply-To: rrr@svl.cdc.com
Organization: Control Data Corporation, Silicon Valley Operations
Lines: 19

In <1991Feb28.151019.22944@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU> worley@compass.com (Dale Worley) writes:

>The problem is that '~' is not recognized by the file system.  You can
>use it in commands because the shell translates '~/' at the beginning
>of an argument into '$HOME/', etc.  For instance, if you say "ls ~"
>you get a listing of your home directory, but if you say "ls '~'" the
>quoting inhibits the expansion of the '~', and you get "~ not found".

Agreed, the shell does this and it is very useful. Because we
sometimes move users from one file system to another to balance
disk usage, we strongly encourage users to employ ~ to avoid
having to change absolute paths if they get moved. I have been
meaning to ask why perl can't support this convention for file
names too. It would allow me to make my perl scripts more "portable".
Any chance of getting perl to support this?
--
Richard R. Ragan   rrr@svl.cdc.com    (408) 496-4340 
Control Data Corporation - Silicon Valley Operations
5101 Patrick Henry Drive, Santa Clara, CA 95054-1111