Ask HN

#1

Post by codedrome » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

I have noticed that educational institutions (.edu in the US, .ac in the UK) usually have staff pages in the format /~[name]. I don't think I have seen this elsewhere. Is there a reason?

Re: Ask HN

#2

Post by troydavis » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

It’s the Unix convention (shell expansion) for a the path to a user’s home directory: https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Tilde-Exp...

As a result, many Web servers exposed user-provided Web content using the same path: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/howto/public_html.html

Universities have continued using that convention, probably because professors have accounts (and thus URLs) for decades.

Re: Ask HN

#3

Post by codedrome » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 11:43 AM UTC

I included a tilde in the title and it and the text after it disappeared. Strange.

Re: Ask HN

#4

Post by codedrome » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 11:46 AM UTC

troydavis wrote: post #2

It’s the Unix convention (shell expansion) for a the path to a user’s home directory: https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Tilde-Exp... As a result, many Web servers exposed user-provided Web content using the same path: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/howto/public_html.html Universities have continued using that convention, probably because professors have accounts (and thus URLs) for decades.

I thought it might be something like that. Thanks for the explanation.