Bash Tilde Expansion

Question

Is it possible to add to the rules that bash uses for tilde expansion? I'd like to have ~data expand to /data/users/me, ~scratch expand to /data/scratch/me etc.. Is this possible, or does bash have too tight a tight hold on the '~'?

Thanks,

Andrew

Answer 1

Tilde expansion is tied to users' home directories (or the contents of the directory stack or $PWD or $OLDPWD). Use variable expansion, aliases or functions to accomplish what you're after. You can also use CDPATH to list a set of directories for cd to look in for destination directories.

Answer 2

~user expands to the home directory of the specified user. A nasty hack that would work is to create user named data with home directory /data/users/me etc. Adding users is distribution-specific.