
Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory? - ptwobrussell
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/34196/why-was-chosen-to-represent-the-home-directory
======
gus_massa
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5090344)
(405 points, 307 days ago, 157 comments)

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tomphoolery
I would like to see a re-emergence of this keyboard design, with some added
modern enhancements like function keys, command/control/option/etc. modifiers,
and media keys.

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hkmurakami
I recently noticed that the Macbooks' Japanese Keyboard Layout is surprisingly
similar to these Terminal keyboard layouts. I wonder why this is?

[https://discussions.apple.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/...](https://discussions.apple.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-23508185-316223/kybard.jpg)

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JumpCrisscross
$ is on 4 and ¥ way off to the right on the Japanese keyboard?

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chattoraj
Speaking of the ¥, notice how it's right under the |?

Early Japanese codepages put ¥ where ASCII has the backslash. Even today, on
most (if not all) OSes render the \ as ¥ when using the Japanese locale.

Further reading:
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2005/09/17/469941.as...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2005/09/17/469941.aspx)

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cheapsteak
Interesting, I think the South Koreans did the same thing.

Installing South Korean games (this was middle school), I've always wondered
why the paths were showing up as :

    
    
        C:₩Program Files₩GRAVITY₩RO  
    

And trying to type \ in the installation path input box results in ₩

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csense
Some programs from that era have keyboard shortcuts that were comfortably done
on those ancient keyboards, but are unnatural enough to cause injuries on
modern keyboards [1].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#Emacs_pinky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#Emacs_pinky)

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Crito
In practice I suspect this tends to manifest itself as hassle, as the user
remaps their keyboard, rather than damage to the user's hands. At least I hope
so.

Somewhat related: Long term Vi use _has_ caused my standard right hand
position to shift one key left. I don't even use hjkl that much anymore, but
Vim (and probably more than a little nethack) have changed how I touch-type
with QWERTY.

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derekp7
I don't have this issue with VI, but I do have that problem with FPS games
that use the wasd keys -- I can only use them if I move my left hand to the
left one key space. So I end up remapping those control keys one to the right,
in games where that is possible.

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jaryd
also interesting: [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-
keys...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys/)

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UNIXgod
I'd be more interested on why the control key was removed from the home row to
help out those who where too lazy to use the shift key or macro a simple
translit to their workflow: tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'

When the datamining show is over let me know. I'm in need of a well paying
position and interested in moving out to california. I can teach shell
automation, programming paradigms and productive workflow to eager learners
new to the UNIX programming environment, hacking and building their own tools.

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CodyJung
Oh! Is this also why, when using git, HEAD~1 and HEAD^1 are equivalent? Or is
it coincidence that they're on the same key?

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djur
HEAD~1 and HEAD^1 are equivalent, but HEAD~n and HEAD^n aren't.

HEAD~n means "the n-parent of HEAD, always choosing the first parent." So
HEAD~3 means the first parent of the first parent of the first parent of HEAD.

HEAD^n means "the nth parent of head". git commits can have multiple parents
if they are merges. So HEAD^3 means the third parent of HEAD.

As a result, HEAD~1 means "the first parent of HEAD" and HEAD^1 means "the
first parent of HEAD", but the 1 means two completely different things.

The gitrevisions manpage is pretty mindblowing:
[https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitrevision...](https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitrevisions.html)

