When you type cd, it basically does the same thing as cd ~. Why?
I'm wondering if it's just a hard-coded behavior or if bash is expanding the command or something.
1 Answer
That is the POSIX specified behaviour. Not bash-specific.
answered May 8, 2013 at 19:28
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5And it's not only POSIX shells. All shells do, even non-POSIX and non-Bourne ones like csh, rc, fish...
cdis one of the few builtins that is common to every shell since Unix version 7. Commented May 8, 2013 at 19:55 -
@StephaneChazelas are there actually any non-POSIX shells still around? besides DOS (and probably powershell)?– strugeeCommented May 9, 2013 at 0:23
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1@strugee. As I said, csh (and its derivative tcsh), rc (and it's derivatives like es or akanga), fish, and a few esoteric ones. CMD.EXE, COMMAND.COM and POWERSHELL.EXE are not Unix shells AFAIK.
tcshandfishare well alive.zshis POSIX-like but not POSIX compliant and is the Unix shell used by most people who actually /use/ a shell (as their main interface to the system). Commented May 9, 2013 at 7:14 -
@StephaneChazelas yeah, i was being more general than "unix shell" when i said shell. anyway, thanks!– strugeeCommented May 9, 2013 at 17:42
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Doesn't do that under Windows... Bites me every time. Commented Jan 28, 2019 at 15:00
man cd: If no directory operand is given and the HOME environment variable is set to a non-empty value, the cd utility shall behave as if the directory named in the HOME environment variable was specified as the directory operand.