[birdiesanders]

Those are equivalent.

[execat]

No. ~etc is equivalent to /home/etc. ~/etc is the same as /home/<current user>/etc.

[michaelmior]

On most systems, that is not the case. Typically a user's home directory is `/home/USERNAME` so `~/etc` would be `/home/USERNAME/etc`.

[ijustlovemath]

Try it for yourself:

[ /home/etc = ~/etc ] || echo theyre different