Expanding / Resolving ~ in node.js

I am new to nodejs. Can node resolve ~ (unix home directory) example ~foo, ~bar to /home/foo, /home/bar

> path.normalize('~mvaidya')
'~mvaidya'
> path.resolve('~mvaidya')
'/home/mvaidya/~mvaidya'
>

This response is wrong; I am hoping that ~mvaidya must resolve to /home/mvaidya

As QZ Support noted, you can use process.env.HOME on OSX/Linux. Here's a simple function with no dependencies.

const path = require('path');
function resolveHome(filepath) {
    if (filepath[0] === '~') {
        return path.join(process.env.HOME, filepath.slice(1));
    }
    return filepath;
}

The reason this is not in Node is because ~ expansion is a bash (or shell) specific thing. It is unclear how to escape it properly. See this comment for details.

There are various libraries offering this, most just a few lines of code...

• https://npm.im/untildify ; doesn't do much more than os.homedir(), see index.js#L10

• https://npm.im/expand-tilde ; basically uses os-homedir to achieve the same, see index.js#L12

• https://npm.im/tilde-expansion ; this uses etc-passwd so doesn't seem very cross platform, see index.js#L21

So you probably want to do this yourself.

This NodeJS library supports this feature via an async callback. It uses the etc-passswd lib to perform the expansion so is probably not portable to Windows or other non Unix/Linux platforms.

• https://www.npmjs.org/package/tilde-expansion
• https://github.com/bahamas10/node-tilde-expansion

If you only want to expand the home page for the current user then this lighter weight API may be all you need. It's also synchronous so simpler to use and works on most platforms.

• https://www.npmjs.org/package/expand-home-dir

Examples:

 expandHomeDir = require('expand-home-dir')

 expandHomeDir('~')
 // => /Users/azer

 expandHomeDir('~/foo/bar/qux.corge')
 // => /Users/azer/foo/bar/qux.corge

Another related lib is home-dir that returns a user's home directory on any platform:

https://www.npmjs.org/package/home-dir

An example:

const os = require("os");

"~/Dropbox/sample/music".replace("~", os.homedir)

I just needed it today and the only less-evasive command was the one from the os.

$ node
> os.homedir()
'/Users/mdesales'

I'm not sure if your syntax is correct since ~ is already a result for the home dir of the current user

This is a combination of some of the previous answers with a little more safety added in.

/**
 * Resolves paths that start with a tilde to the user's home directory.
 *
 * @param  {string} filePath '~/GitHub/Repo/file.png'
 * @return {string}          '/home/bob/GitHub/Repo/file.png'
 */
function resolveTilde (filePath) {
  const os = require('os');
  if (!filePath || typeof(filePath) !== 'string') {
    return '';
  }

  // '~/folder/path' or '~' not '~alias/folder/path'
  if (filePath.startsWith('~/') || filePath === '~') {
    return filePath.replace('~', os.homedir());
  }

  return filePath;
}

• Uses more modern os.homedir() instead of process.env.HOME.
• Uses a simple helper function that can be called from anywhere.
• Has basic type checking. You may want to default to returning os.homedir() if a non-string is passed in instead of returning empty string.
• Verifies that path starts with ~/ or is just ~, to not replace other aliases like ~stuff/.
• Uses a simple "replace first instance" approach, instead of less intuitive .slice(1).

Today I used https://github.com/sindresorhus/untildify

I run on OSX, worked well.