I've written this script:
#!/bin/bash file="~/Desktop/test.txt" echo "TESTING" > $file
The script doesn't work; it gives me this error:
./tester.sh: line 4: ~/Desktop/test.txt: No such file or directory
What am I doing wrong?
Try replacing ~
with $HOME
. Tilde expansion only happens when the tilde is unquoted. See info "(bash) Tilde Expansion"
.
You could also do file=~/Desktop
without quoting it, but if you ever replace part of this with something with a field separator in it, then it will break. Quoting the values of variables is probably a good thing to get into the habit of anyway. Quoting variable file=~/"Desktop"
will also work but I think that is rather ugly.
Another reason to prefer $HOME
, when possible: tilde expansion only happens at the beginnings of words. So command --option=~/foo
will only work if command
does tilde expansion itself, which will vary by command, while command --option="$HOME/foo"
will always work.
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