January 19, 2018
1 min read
While writing bash scripts I've noticed the $HOME variable being used instead of ~ . to reference the user's home directory. It turns out that ~ is just being expanded by the terminal into the $HOME variable anyway. Because of this, it appears to be more robust to use $HOME in scripts as it's not guaranteed the tilde will be properly expanded (even though it will be in most cases).
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11587343/difference-between-home-and-tilde http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html#tag_18_06_01