tilde expansion fails when running “cd -” in bash

Question

Recently I find I can't use cd - to go back to last directory sometimes. It gives the error of -bash: cd: ~/whatever_dir: No such file or directory. A closer look shows that the error only happens if the last directory contains tilde. It seems tilde cannot be expanded. "cd ~", however, can successfully change to my home directory. What's the problem? I know tilde won't expand inside quotes, but the last directory stored is not in qotes when executing cd -, right? Plus, cd - worked for me previously.

Answer 1

The likely source of the problem, executed as part of PROMPT_COMMAND in your bash configuration:

PWD="${PWD/$HOME/~}"

Stop reassigning PWD to a different value. It will just break things.

Answer 2

You have a serious bug in your shell which you should report. You said that in such a situation, $OLDPWD shows ~/whatever_dir. It should not.

Here is what I have here:

fge@erwin ~/whatever_dir $ pwd
/home/fge/whatever_dir
fge@erwin ~/whatever_dir $ cd -
/home/fge
fge@erwin ~ $ echo $OLDPWD
/home/fge/whatever_dir

~ is just a convenient shortcut used by shells to signify your home directory. Mine is /home/fge. In any event, $OLDPWD should show an absolute path, NOT a path with ~ in it, except if you do have a directory named ~.