Run dialog (Alt-F2) fails to expand tilde (~) into home

[Jani Uusitalo]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

I'm running a Lucid desktop, but with UNE as the interface.

In UNIX, the tilde character ~ usually refers to the user's home directory. However, the run dialog doesn't seem to support this.

Steps to reproduce:

1. In a terminal:
$ echo "hello" > ~/foo
$ cat ~/foo
hello

2. Press Alt+F2 to bring up the run dialog. Enter:
gedit ~/foo

Expected result: have ~/foo open in gedit with the content "hello".

Actual result: a file called foo opens, but it's empty and obviously not the one created. From gedit's title I'm guessing the run dialog passes ~ as the name of a directory residing within the actual ~, user's home.

[Jani Uusitalo (uusijani)]

Just a note that this no longer happens now that I'm running 12.04 with Unity; Unity's run dialog expands tilde correctly. Still broken in Gnome panel 3.2.0 though.