{"id":5415,"date":"2018-11-11T14:35:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-11T14:35:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5415"},"modified":"2018-11-11T14:35:33","modified_gmt":"2018-11-11T14:35:33","slug":"why-does-tilde-mean-home-in-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5415","title":{"rendered":"Why Does Tilde (~) Mean Home In Linux?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you use the Unix or Linux command-line, you may very well wonder about the origins of some of the &#8220;special&#8221; characters. One of those is tilde (~) which is expanded by the shell into &#8220;home&#8221; :-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>\u2713 mike@Michelin\u00bb echo $HOME                        \n\/home\/mike\n\u2713 mike@Michelin\u00bb echo ~\n\/home\/mike\n\u2713 mike@Michelin\u00bb echo ~root\n\/root<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t of course work in general; just in the shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But where did this usage originate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it turns out, it was the markings on the keyboard of the ADM3A terminal :-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"62\" height=\"71\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/adm3a-home-key.jpg?resize=62%2C71&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5416\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>If you used Unix in the late 1970s\/1980s, you may very well have used the ADM3A terminal and it seems that those who added the tilde feature to the Unix shell were amongst the users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you use the Unix or Linux command-line, you may very well wonder about the origins of some of the &#8220;special&#8221; characters. One of those is tilde (~) which is expanded by the shell into &#8220;home&#8221; :- This doesn&#8217;t of course work in general; just in the shell. But where did this usage originate? As <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5415' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[1811,43,1810,649],"class_list":["post-5415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","category-history","tag-home","tag-linux","tag-tilde","tag-unix","category-4-id","category-6-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1pl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5417,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5415\/revisions\/5417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}