what does this do? ~

[sammybee]

Hi All,

Just converting a script someone else has written, am confused by the use of this ~ symbol?? What does it do??

Cheers

Sam

 

[SantaMufasa]

Sammy, my man,

Context, Context, Context... Can you please copy and paste the "surroundings" of its use? There is no specific syntactical meaning of "~" in Oracle, so it must be something programmatical.

Looking forward to seeing your code,

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)

http://www.dasages.com

@ 17:37 (20Jan05) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"),
@ 10:37 (20Jan05) Mountain Time

Click here to Donate to Tsunami Relief. 100% of your contributions here go to the victims...0% to administration.
They were "The First-Responder" to the disaster, with relief deliveries arriving before Red Cross and U.S. aid.

 

[alexhu]

In UNIX ksh it is a short form for 'the home directory of'

so ~user5 is the home directory of user5

Alex

 

[carp]

And since it doesn't turn up very often in the data we maintain, I often use it as a default value for the NVL function (e.g., WHERE NVL(i.item_number, '~') = NVL(j.item_number,'~')).
So back to SantaMufasa's point - CONTEXT!
Otherwise, the answer must be "It depends".

 

[johnherman]

Continuing with alex hu's almost correct remarks. In unix, it is an symbol/abbreviation for the user's home directory and can be used in statements such as cd ~ or referenced in path statements /~/work

-------------------------
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that noboby appreciates how difficult it was.
- Steven Wright

 

[alexhu]

Almost correct ? What did I miss ?

Alex

 

[johnherman]

In your example of user5, the home directory of user5 is most likely /home/user5.

In this case, executing the command: cd ~
will be the equivalent of: cd /home/user5

Or to copy a file from your current directory to your home directory: cp filename ~
which is the equivalent of cp filename /home/user5

If this is what you meant, I apologize, but it was not clear to me.

-------------------------
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that noboby appreciates how difficult it was.
- Steven Wright

 

[KenCunningham]

I think what Alex meant is that you can issue cd ~user5 as any other user and still end up in user5's home directory. He'll correct me if I'm wrong, no doubt.

 

[SantaMufasa]

Actually, the confusing part of this thread is that Sammy has left us in the dark about context for nearly a week. Sammy, please post sample code that indicates use of "~" so we can discuss your issue without guessing the use/purpose of "~".

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)

http://www.dasages.com

@ 19:05 (25Jan05) UTC (aka "GMT" and "Zulu"),
@ 12:05 (25Jan05) Mountain Time

Click here to Donate to Tsunami Relief. 100% of your contributions here go to the victims...0% to administration.
They were "The First-Responder" to the disaster, with relief deliveries arriving before Red Cross and U.S. aid.