Unable to stop the creation of backups to root by Vim/Emacs

Question

Problem 1: my Vim makes backups with the extension ~ to my root

I have the following line in my .vimrc

set backup backupdir=~/tmp/vim//,~/tmp//,.//,/var/tmp//,/tmp//$

However, I cannot see a root directory in the line.

Why does my Vim make backups of my shell scripts with the extension ~ to my root?

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Problem 2: my Zsh run my shell scripts at login which I have in my PATH. For instance, my "replaceUp" shell-script started at my root at login. I keep it at ~/bin/shells/apps by default.

Why does Zsh run shell scripts which are in my PATH at login?

Answer 1

The files ending with ~ are swap files used by vim while editing files. You can try setting the backupdir and directory variables

set backupdir=~/tmp/vim//,~/tmp//,.//,/var/tmp//,/tmp//
set directory=~/tmp/vim//,~/tmp//,.//,/var/tmp//,/tmp//