What does ~ stand for in a bash command line?

Question

I know that ~ usually denotes my home directory. But I just accidentally issued

touch ~

and got a list of I don't know what:

~admin  ~Debian-exim/ ~gnats  ~messagebus/  ~postfix/  ~saned  ~systemd-network/  ~xrdp etc...

What is this list? What does ~ stand for in this context?

I think you meant that you typed `touch ~` and __pressed tab two times__, right? — KamilCuk, Apr 18 '20 at 08:58
Does this answer your question? [Meaning of tilde in Linux bash (not home directory)](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/998626/meaning-of-tilde-in-linux-bash-not-home-directory) — jonrsharpe, Apr 18 '20 at 08:59

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 18 '20 at 09:03

Take a look at the man page for bash. There you will find a section called Tilde Expansion:

If  a  word begins with an unquoted tilde character (`~'), all of the characters preceding the first unquoted slash (or all characters, if there
       is no unquoted slash) are considered a tilde-prefix.  If none of the characters in the tilde-prefix are quoted, the characters in the tilde-pre‐
       fix  following  the  tilde are treated as a possible login name.

So you probably got all your possible login names.

What does ~ stand for in a bash command line?

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