Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory?
Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory?

Quoting Wikipedia:


  On Unix-like operating systems (including BSD, GNU/Linux and Mac OS
  X), tilde often indicates the current user's home directory: for
  example, if the current user's home directory is /home/bloggsj, then
  cd, cd ~, cd /home/bloggsj or cd $HOME are equivalent. This practice
  derives from the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A terminal in common use during the
  1970s, which happened to have the tilde symbol and the word "Home"
  (for moving the cursor to the upper left) on the same key.




You can find photos of the Lear-Siegler ADM-3A keyboard on this site.



This terminal is also the source of the movement commands used in the vi editor: h, j, k, l for left, down, up, right.
    