Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> writes: > On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 10:36:52PM +0100, Johannes Sixt wrote: > > All that said, if we're just interested in allowing this for config, > then we already have such a wrapper function: git_config_pathname(). > > So I don't think it's a big deal to implement it in any of these ways. > It's much more important to get the syntax right, because that's > user-facing and will be with us forever. All of us are on the same page after seeing the clarification by Dscho, it seems. I came to pretty much the same conclusion this morning before reading this subthread. Outside config values, the callers of expand_user_path() only feed "~/.git$constant", and they are all about "personal customization" that do not want to be shared with other users of the same installation, so "relative to runtime prefix" feature would not be wanted. But we do not know about new caller's needs. For now I am OK to have it in expand_user_path(), possibly renaming the function if people feel it is needed (I don't). Between ~<reserved name> and $VARIABLE_LOOKING_THINGS, I do not have a strong preference either way, but I am getting an impression that the latter is more generally favoured in the discussion?