Dir.chdir '~'

ruby-talk
1

Does anyone know why this happens?

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> Dir.chdir '~'
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - ~
from (irb):2:in `chdir’
from (irb):2
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i686-linux]

2

Joel VanderWerf vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU writes:

Does anyone know why this happens?

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - ~
from (irb):2:in `chdir’
from (irb):2
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i686-linux]

You must be starting out in a directory with a ~ subdirectory that
does not itself have a ~ subdirectory. Thus the first time you change
to directory ~ it succeeds, but the second time it fails.

$ mkdir ~
$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> Dir.pwd
=> “/home/tim/ruby/~”
irb(main):003:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - ~
from (irb):3:in `chdir’
from (irb):3

In Ruby, you can use use ENV[‘HOME’], rather than ~, to refer to your
home directory, if that’s what you intended. However, Dir.chdir
defaults to your home directory, so you don’t actually need that in
this case.

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.pwd
=> “/home/tim/ruby”
irb(main):002:0> Dir.chdir
=> 0
irb(main):003:0> Dir.pwd
=> “/home/tim”

I hope this helps,

Tim

3

More to the point, I think is that Ruby doesn’t expand ~ the way
the UNIX shells do. What you probably want is Dir.chdir(ENV[‘HOME’]).

-Mark

···

On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 09:22:02PM -0500, Tim Heaney wrote:

Joel VanderWerf vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU writes:

Does anyone know why this happens?

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - ~
from (irb):2:in `chdir’
from (irb):2
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i686-linux]

You must be starting out in a directory with a ~ subdirectory that
does not itself have a ~ subdirectory. Thus the first time you change
to directory ~ it succeeds, but the second time it fails.

4

Tim Heaney wrote:

Joel VanderWerf vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU writes:

Does anyone know why this happens?

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - ~
from (irb):2:in `chdir’
from (irb):2
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i686-linux]

You must be starting out in a directory with a ~ subdirectory that
does not itself have a ~ subdirectory. Thus the first time you change
to directory ~ it succeeds, but the second time it fails.

Yep, that was it. Thanks!

5

Mark J. Reed wrote:

···

On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 09:22:02PM -0500, Tim Heaney wrote:

Joel VanderWerf vjoel@PATH.Berkeley.EDU writes:

Does anyone know why this happens?

$ irb
irb(main):001:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
=> 0
irb(main):002:0> Dir.chdir ‘~’
Errno::ENOENT: No such file or directory - ~
from (irb):2:in `chdir’
from (irb):2
$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.1 (2003-12-25) [i686-linux]

You must be starting out in a directory with a ~ subdirectory that
does not itself have a ~ subdirectory. Thus the first time you change
to directory ~ it succeeds, but the second time it fails.

More to the point, I think is that Ruby doesn’t expand ~ the way
the UNIX shells do. What you probably want is Dir.chdir(ENV[‘HOME’]).

Ok. I guess I have to expand_path if I want that behavior.

irb(main):001:0> File.expand_path ‘~’
=> “/home/vjoel”

Thanks!