From: PerlFAQ Server on
This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq5.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
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to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

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5.15: How can I translate tildes (~) in a filename?

Use the <> ("glob()") operator, documented in perlfunc. Versions of Perl
older than 5.6 require that you have a shell installed that groks
tildes. Later versions of Perl have this feature built in. The
"File::KGlob" module (available from CPAN) gives more portable glob
functionality.

Within Perl, you may use this directly:

$filename =~ s{
^ ~ # find a leading tilde
( # save this in $1
[^/] # a non-slash character
* # repeated 0 or more times (0 means me)
)
}{
$1
? (getpwnam($1))[7]
: ( $ENV{HOME} || $ENV{LOGDIR} )
}ex;



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