From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-09-20T09:57:40+09:00
Subject: Re: File.expand_path and ~ on windows

On Saturday, September 20, 2003, 2:18:35 AM, Sean 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.

I use Windows, and choose to set HOME to D:/home/gavin, so that
Windows and Cygwin can be in agreement.  Certain Windows programs will
make use of any %HOME% setting.

Gavin