I am novice to Linux, using it a little more than a year. Can anybody help me resolve my question?
When I use ~/ only it shows user home directory. Why does it not work in the case of using ~ alone to specify path to a file or directory?
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Catlover
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Gowthaman Palanisamy
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~ means the home directory of the logged on user whereas ~/ means the path to the beginning of a directory.
From here:
The tilde (~) is a Linux "shortcut" to denote a user's home directory. Thus tilde slash (~/) is the beginning of a path to a file or directory below the user's home directory.
On a side note If you see like ~Gowthaman/ then it will be the user Gowthaman home directory
Rahul Tripathi
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2root dir of application?? – vish4071 Aug 28 '15 at 06:19
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@vish4071:- Added some more details with a reference. Hope that helps! – Rahul Tripathi Aug 28 '15 at 06:22
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3Still I think that "root dir of _application_" is very strange or even missleading. Actually, the source you quote gives a much better explanation ("... is the beginning of a path to a file below the user's home directory..."). IOW "~/" has no special meaning. Just like "./" has no special meaning (appart from the "."). – Christian.K Aug 28 '15 at 06:27
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@Christian.K:- Agreed. Updated the misleading part – Rahul Tripathi Aug 28 '15 at 06:27
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I am very much confusing in what is user's home directory whether it refer /home or /home/
/ – Gowthaman Palanisamy Aug 28 '15 at 06:41