> Is using a swung dash in front of the file name
> the only usual UNIX/Linux backup convention
> (using "~filename" as a backup for "filename")

There really is no convention for backup file names. Unlike DOS/Windows,
extensions do not exist as such in Unix -- the '.' is a filename character
like any other. In DOS/Windows, it's a separator. Of course, habits con-
tinue :) and putting 'extensions' after the '.' can still serve some
useful purpose, although Unix doesn't care.

That being said, the only software I know that uses the '~' to mean that
it's a backup file is Emacs, so that's hardly a convention, in any sense
(apologies to Richard Stallman, of course :).

> The reason i ask is i can see a possible visual
> conflict here with the use of the swung dash as
> home directory.

Not really: the tilde ~ is always used at the *beginning* of a filename
/ directory, never at the end.


>       -> User misreads

There's always that possibility. One thing I found irksome in the beginning
was the 'convention' of file names-  particularly for versions of software,
that tend to be quite long and are intermixed with periods, dashes, and
underlines - like foopackage-1.2.0-1._whatever_.something.rpm :)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
David E. Fox                              Thanks for letting me
[EMAIL PROTECTED]                            change magnetic patterns
[EMAIL PROTECTED]               on your hard disk.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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