What is the alternative for ~ (user's home dir

Question

I'm trying to use the command prompt to move some files, I am used to the linux terminal where I use ~ to specify the my home directory I've looked everywhere but I couldn't seem to find it for windows command prompt (Documents and Settings\[user])

Answer 1

You can %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH% for the drive + \docs settings\username or \users\username.

Answer 2

You can do almost the same yourself. Open Environment Variables and click "New" Button in the "User Variables for ..." .
Variable Name: ~
Variable Value: Click "Browse Directory..." button and choose a directory which you want.

And after this, open cmd and type this:
cd %~%
. It works.

Answer 3

I just tried set ~=%userprofile% and that works too if you want to keep using the same habit

You can then use %~% instead.

Answer 4

You're going to be disappointed: %userprofile%

You can use other terminals, though. Powershell, which I believe you can get on XP and later (and comes preinstalled with Win7), allows you to use ~ for home directory.

Answer 5

You can use %systemdrive%%homepath% environment variable to accomplish this.

The two command variables when concatenated gives you the desired user's home directory path as below:

Running echo %systemdrive% on command prompt gives:

C:

Running echo %homepath% on command prompt gives:

\Users\<CurrentUserName>

When used together it becomes:

C:\Users\<CurrentUserName>

Answer 6

If you want a shorter version of Jay's you could try

    set usr=%userprofile%
    cd %usr%

Or you could even use %u% if you wanted to. It saves some keystrokes anyway.