What does `~/ ` mean?

Question

I'm new to Linux and Ubuntu. People keep using ~/filename in their answers to my questions. What does ~/ mean?

andrewsomething · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-04 19:48:34Z

53

~/ is shorthand for the current user's home folder. So if your user name is "foobar" it expands to /home/foobar/

answered Dec 4, 2011 at 19:48

andrewsomething

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8

And if you want to refer to another user home directory you can use ~user, as in ls -l ~enzotib/Documents/.
– enzotib
Dec 4, 2011 at 20:05
2

Actually, ~ is the shorthand for current user's home folder :)
– heartsmagic
Dec 4, 2011 at 20:17
1

I did not say invalid :) Generally we see ~ instead of ~/, since / is not necessary there.
– heartsmagic
Dec 4, 2011 at 20:47
8

This is only usually correct, but not technically correct. ~ actually expands to the value of the environment variable HOME. If you change the value of HOME, ~ will also no longer point to that user's home directory.
– kojiro
Dec 5, 2011 at 2:41
1

There's no place like ~
– Foon
Mar 22, 2013 at 1:56

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Lucas Amorim Silva · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-03 14:53:04Z

5

An important thing is, if you are using the root user, ~/ will be the /root directory, not /home/user_name.

In this case, do:

> cd ~/ ; pwd ;

It will exit:

> /root

answered Jan 3, 2016 at 14:53

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This is a direct result of the fact that /root is listed as the home directory of the root user in your /etc/passwd table. It isn't a special case.
– thomasrutter
Aug 8, 2018 at 0:51

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haziz · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-08 00:44:49Z

2

In general the tilde ~ represents your home folder. Use it to refer to your home directory at the command line.

answered Dec 18, 2011 at 9:23

haziz

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