Question

For some reason tilde expansion in Cygwin is not working for me at the prompt:

$ ls ~
ls: cannot access : No such file or directory

$ ls ~/bin
(lists /bin not $HOME/bin)

$ echo $HOME
/home/myusername

$ echo ~


$

In the last case there (echo ~) there is no output (other than a couple of blank lines.)

I have set expand-tilde on set in my $HOME/.inputrc file. Is there something else I need configured?

Answer 1

This is a recurring problem with Cygwin that, I believe, was tied to some upgrade bug a while ago and never resolved.

In any case, the solution is simple: open /etc/passwd in your favourite editor, and on the line with your username, between the fifth and sixth colons (the last and second-to-last), write in the correct path to your home directory, ie /home/myusername.

The relevant line in my /etc/passwd looks something like the below:

meand:unused:12345:54321:PCNAME\meand,S-1-5-21-4567891230-654987321-312456978-58252:/home/meand:/bin/screen