Getting the home directory?

In PowerShell, the most reliable way to reference the user's current home directory is to use an automatic variable $HOME

internally "..."

if it's part of a larger path :

• $mySourceDir = "$HOME/Projects/svn/myProject/trunk"; Set-Location $mySourceDir
  
  
  ( Set-Location
  
  Equivalent to PowerShell cd
  
  , thanks to the built-in alias definition, you can also use cd
  
  .)

• If you pass a path as an argument to a command, you can get away without the closing "..."
  
  , depending on what characters the path contains; eg,
  Set-Location $HOME/Desktop
  
  

• Works on both Windows and Unix platforms , whereas if you try to use environment variables such as $env:HOME
  
  , the platform differences will look like.

• To find out about all the automatic variables (built-in variables) that PowerShell defines, run Get-Help about_Automatic_Variables
  
  (from this point $HOME
  
  onwards , the entry reflects only the Windows perspective, but $HOME
  
  works similarly on Unix platforms).

Use ~

only if you are sure that the current location is the location of the filesystem:

• Current location is a generalized PowerShell concept of the current directory: PowerShell generalizes the drive concept to include other (usually) hierarchical data stores, such as the Windows registry, the directory of all defined functions (drive Function:
  
  ), variables ( Variable
  
  ), or environment variables ( Env:
  
  ).

• Each such disk is provided by a disk vendor, of which the [disk vendor] file system is only one instance.

• ~
  
  is a disk centric concept, so using only ~
  
  , without explicitly referring to the disk provider, refers to the original location as being determined by the provider underlying the current location .

  • Some vendors do not provide a default value for the view ~
    
    , causing attempts to use it to fail; for example, this is the case for the provider Environment
    
    and its disk Env:
    
    :
    Set-Location Env:; Set-Location ~
    
    leads to an error
    Home location for this provider is not set. To set the home location, call "(get-psprovider 'Environment').Home = 'path'
    
    

• It is a disk vendor that interprets ~
  
  , therefore also works internally and ~

'...'

"..."
  
  

  • From a filesystem location, the following commands work the same:
    • Set-Location ~/Desktop
      
      
    • Set-Location "~/Desktop"
      
      
    • Set-Location '~/Desktop'
      
      
  • Contrast this with POSIX-like wrappers like bash
    
    where it is a wrapper that expands ~
    
    ahead of the front before the target command sees it, but only if it is not defined.