From: Austin Ziegler <austin@...>
Date: 2003-09-20T02:27:39+09:00
Subject: Re: File.expand_path and ~ on windows

On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 01:18:35 +0900, Sean O'Dell wrote:
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Sep 2003 11:36:28 +0900, Tom Felker wrote:
>>> Wouldn't it make more sense to expand it to My Documents
>>> (C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents on WinXP)?  I
>>> suppose it would be worthwhile to be able to disable it, though.
>> No. ~ has no meaning to Windows shells. There are times when I wish
>> that it didn't to Unix shells. After all, that's what ${HOME} is for.
> This is true; but I think for portability reasons, since COMMAND.COM
> isn't exactly what I would call a culture of shell idioms, ~ and ${HOME}
> (%HOME%) should be considered synonymous.  If not ~, then at least
> ${HOME} ought to point to C:\Documents and Settings\UserName I think.

That's a no fly zone, as far as I'm concerned. My %HOME% is not the same as 
my %USERPROFILE%. Further, ~foo is a valid filename on Windows. (It's valid 
in Unix, too, but you have to do \~foo to get it to work from the shell.)

I'd like to see Ruby handle this right on each platform.

-austin
--
austin ziegler    * austin@halostatue.ca * Toronto, ON, Canada
software designer * pragmatic programmer * 2003.09.19
                                         * 13.23.38