"~" ASCII character 126. Common nAMes are: ITU-T: tilde squiggle twiddle not. Rare: approx wiggle swung dash enyay INTERCAL: sqiggle (sic). Used as C' s prefix bitwise negationoperator and in Unixcsh, GNU Emacs, and elsewhere, to stand for the current user' s home directory, or, when prefixed to a {login nAMe}, for the given user' s home directory. The "swung dash" or "approximation" sign is not quite the sAMe as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare angle brackets). [Has anyone else heard this called "tidal" (as in wave)?] (1996-10-18)