From: nobu.nokada@...
Date: 2003-06-21T19:15:40+09:00
Subject: Re: File.expand_path with files beginnig with ~ (tilde) on Windoze

Hi,

At Wed, 18 Jun 2003 23:14:39 +0900,
Grzegorz Chrupala wrote:
> On Windoze, where the "~" convention is not used, in my opinion file
> names starting with "~" should _not_ be treated specially. When
> current directory is "C:/", I would expect
> 
>   File.expand_path("~$foobar")
> 
> to return "C:/~$foobar", just like
> 
>   File.expand_path("foobar")
> 
> returns "C:/foobar"

I don't guess it is Windows specific issue.

> An alternative would be to signal an error, but silently returning
> "~$foobar" doesn't make much sense. There is no reason on Windoze to
> use the Unix convention and treat file names starting with "~" any
> different that other files. What makes worse is the fact that many
> temp files created by M$ Office applications use names starting with
> "~$".

When you are sure that it's a real file name but not someone's
home directory, you can avoid it by prepending "./".

  File.expand_path(path.sub(/\A(?=~)/, "./"))

-- 
Nobu Nakada