Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery by SteveL-MSFT · Pull Request #11552 · PowerShell/PowerShell · GitHub

PR Summary

The ~ meaning user home path is a commonly used convention. Bash (and compatible shells) expands this automatically (along with other derivatives not covered in this PR). Dotnet global tools sets $env:PATH with a path to the tools starting with ~. In PowerShell, that is treated as a literal so the tools aren't found. Fix is in command discovery, when processing $env:PATH, handle the case where a sub-path starts with ~/ or just contains ~ and expand it to be the user home path.

PR Context

Fix #11531

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This should only check the very first directory, right? I don't know if tilda can be in the middle...

I'd expect that we expand tilde for all elements. There are other applications which add their paths.

My intent here is to only handle the beginning case which is the most common case. ~ in the middle doesn't make sense.

LGTM

If we do this for PATH, shall we do the same for PSModulePath then?

There are potentially other PATH values where we might want to apply this as well. I don't recall the exact names off the top of my head, but don't Mac and Linux have PATH-type environment variables that dictate where to look for native library dependencies to load?

I guess it is tabs here and below. Please fix indentations.

I noticed the file was mixed formatting, I'll reformat the entire file.

Suggested change

      
                        New-Item -Path $testPath -ItemType Directory
          
                        New-Item -Path $testPath -ItemType Directory > $null

I'd expect that we expand tilde for all elements. There are other applications which add their paths.

From https://github.com/dotnet/cli/issues/9321 I see that only $HOME works for zsh and MacOs.

Rain Sallow (/u/ta11ow) (@vexx32), you're thinking of LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Similar for PSModulePath, I'm not sure if we want to promote usage of this. This change was specifically to address the dotnet global tool issue.

Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT) yeah I understand that. My concern is simply that we will now have two separate ways we handle the one "kind" of environment variable.

It's certainly not desirable to promote this oddity too much, I'll agree, but I wonder whether it's better / simpler to be consistent here and have a single way of handling at least initial path resolution for paths in these variables?

I think we need to document the feature.

PoshChan-Bot (@PoshChan) please retry windows

Steve Lee (@SteveL-MSFT), successfully started retry of PowerShell-CI-Windows

LGTM but maybe open an issue to support Tilda in other PATH-like variables.

Created #11570

🎉v7.0.0-rc.2 has been released which incorporates this pull request.:tada:

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Release Notes

…hell#11552)

Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery

66a817e

Steve Lee (SteveL-MSFT) requested a review from Andrew (anmenaga) January 10, 2020 17:56

Steve Lee (SteveL-MSFT) assigned Andrew (anmenaga) Jan 10, 2020

Steve Lee (SteveL-MSFT) added this to the GA-consider milestone Jan 10, 2020

TylerLeonhardt reviewed Jan 10, 2020

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Dongbo Wang (daxian-dbw) approved these changes Jan 10, 2020

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Ilya (iSazonov) reviewed Jan 11, 2020

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reformat file

28ed0a4

address Ilya's feedback reformatting doc and redirect new-item to $null

e476a33

PoshChan-Bot (PoshChan) reviewed Jan 13, 2020

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Comment thread src/System.Management.Automation/engine/CommandDiscovery.cs

Ilya (iSazonov) added CL-Engine Indicates that a PR should be marked as an engine change in the Change Log Documentation Needed in this repo Documentation is needed in this repo labels Jan 13, 2020

TylerLeonhardt approved these changes Jan 13, 2020

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Steve Lee (SteveL-MSFT) mentioned this pull request Jan 13, 2020

Expand tilde for LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PSModulePath? #11570

Closed

Andrew (anmenaga) merged commit de2d34b into PowerShell:master Jan 14, 2020

Aditya Patwardhan (adityapatwardhan) modified the milestones: GA-consider, GA-approved Jan 14, 2020

Dongbo Wang (daxian-dbw) pushed a commit that referenced this pull request Jan 14, 2020

Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery (#11552 )

3cc0a5d

Dongbo Wang (daxian-dbw) modified the milestones: GA-approved, 7.0.0-rc.2 Jan 14, 2020

ghost mentioned this pull request Jan 16, 2020

Handle ~ in PATH #11531

Closed

Steve Lee (SteveL-MSFT) deleted the tilde-path branch June 6, 2020 02:30

Travis Plunk (TravisEz13) mentioned this pull request Oct 12, 2022

Back-port to 7.0: Update list of PowerShell team members in release tools #18266

Merged

22 tasks

Thatgfsj (Thatgfsj) pushed a commit to Thatgfsj/PowerShell that referenced this pull request Aug 6, 2026

Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery (PowerS…

d1d0262

…hell#11552)

                                   foreach (string directory in tokenizedPath)
                                   {
                                       string tempDir = directory.TrimStart();
+                                      if (tempDir.EqualsOrdinalIgnoreCase("~"))

+                      }
+              		BeforeAll {
+                          $oldPath = $env:PATH

+                          Copy-Item -Path $pwsh -Destination "~/$pwsh2"
+                          $testPath = Join-Path -Path "~" -ChildPath (New-Guid)
+                          New-Item -Path $testPath -ItemType Directory

	New-Item -Path $testPath -ItemType Directory
	New-Item -Path $testPath -ItemType Directory > $null

Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery by SteveL-MSFT · Pull Request #11552 · PowerShell/PowerShell · GitHub

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Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery - #11552

Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery#11552Andrew (anmenaga) merged 3 commits intoPowerShell:masterPowerShell/PowerShell:masterfrom SteveL-MSFT:tilde-pathSteveL-MSFT/PowerShell:tilde-pathCopy head branch name to clipboard

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Support expanding ~ in $env:PATH when doing command discovery#11552
Andrew (anmenaga) merged 3 commits into
PowerShell:masterfrom
SteveL-MSFT:tilde-path

Steve Lee (SteveL-MSFT) commented Jan 10, 2020 •
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Rain Sallow (/u/ta11ow) (vexx32) commented Jan 11, 2020 •
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