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home directory expansion (~) within an argument

Answer 1

+4 A:

rdesktop -r disk:bacon=$(echo ~/bacon) host

will do it. It won't please the eye, but it will work.

pilcrow 2009-11-06 07:08:26

Do you know why it doesn't work? I've been reading the manual and have found only this *"Each variable assignment is checked for unquoted tilde-prefixes immediately following a : or the first =. In these cases, tilde expansion is also performed. Consequently, one may use file names with tildes in assignments to PATH, MAILPATH, and CDPATH, and the shell assigns the expanded value."*

Vinko Vrsalovic 2009-11-06 07:12:48

But from that, it looks like as if the disk:bacon=~/bacon should work...

Vinko Vrsalovic 2009-11-06 07:13:38

bash looks for tildes after ':' in the replacement string. 'disk:bacon=...' is not a valid variable assignment.

outis 2009-11-06 07:18:23

In particular, 'disk:bacon=...' isn't a variable assignment both because it isn't in a valid part of the command (variable assignments must come before the command name) and ':' isn't a valid character for a variable name.

outis 2009-11-06 07:32:38

Answer 2

+4 A:

While ~ does not expand (it's used as specially routed of the path), $HOME does.

rdesktop -r disk:bacon=$HOME/bacon host

But be careful with environment-changing su!

Pavel Shved 2009-11-06 07:41:36

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home directory expansion (~) within an argument

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