Swift: How to expand a tilde in a path String

Question

How can I expand a path String with a tilde in Swift? I have a string like "~/Desktop" and I'd like to use this path with the NSFileManager methods, which requires the tilde to be expanded to "/Users/<myuser>/Desktop".

(This question with a clear problem statement doesn't exist yet, this should be easily findable. Some similar but not satisfying questions are Can not make path to the file in Swift, Simple way to read local file using Swift?, Tilde-based Paths in Objective-C)

Answer 1

Tilde expansion

Swift 1

"~/Desktop".stringByExpandingTildeInPath

Swift 2

NSString(string: "~/Desktop").stringByExpandingTildeInPath

Swift 3

NSString(string: "~/Desktop").expandingTildeInPath

Home Directory

Additionally you can get the home directory like this (returns a String/String?):

NSHomeDirectory()
NSHomeDirectoryForUser("<User>")

In Swift 3 and OS X 10.12 it's also possible to use this (returns a URL/URL?):

FileManager.default().homeDirectoryForCurrentUser
FileManager.default().homeDirectory(forUser: "<User>")

Edit: In Swift 3.1 this got changed to FileManager.default.homeDirectoryForCurrentUser