Reinier Olislagers schrieb:
> And while ~ is a relative path,
No, this is an absolute path (pointing to the home directory). It only
needs expansion to give you this absolute path. It's just a placeholder
for a certain absolute path (which can vary). One or two dots would be a
relative path (meaning current and parent directory).
> the defining characteristic is that is a
> character that gets expanded by (at least) the shell, as Mattias pointed
> out in his other mail.
And it's not the only variable that can be expanded (by the shell).
Environment variables may be used in paths too.
> Still, ExpandFileName DOES expand ~ to /home/whatever, and that is not
> mentioned in help:
> "ExpandFileName expands the filename to an absolute filename."
How can this be misunderstood? What else should be expanded if not
placeholders and variables?
> I think the docs for ExpandFileName should be updated to indicate ~ gets
> expanded, e.g.:
> "ExpandFileName expands the filename to an absolute filename. On
> Unix/Linux systems, ExpandFileName will also expand the ~ (home
> directory) symbol."
But ~ is not the only placeholder that will be expanded. Relative paths
would become absolute paths and environment variables will be replaced
by their values too. And I think it's not restricted to Linus/Unix, it
happens on Windows too. So if at all I would list all these possible
expansions:
"ExpandFileName expands the filename to an absolute filename. Replaced
would be
-) placeholders (like ~)
-) environment variables (like HOME)
-) relative path would completed to absolute paths
etc.
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