Solaris

All the shells I know that support the tilde expansion do exhibit on every OS the same behavior as the one bash is documenting.

I suspect either a user mistake or a directory related configuration or error.

Then you don't know csh.
tcsh 6.12 on Solaris:

Code:

> set nonomatch
> echo ~nonsense
~nonsense
> unset nonomatch
> echo ~nonsense
Unknown user: nonsense.

Good catch. I have to admit I avoid and disregard csh for any purpose since 30 years or so ...

Actually ldaplist isn't available. I suspect this to be an implementation issue where in LDAP may have a default home directory specified for certain non-existent users on the server?

---------- Post updated at 03:34 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:28 PM ----------

Its KSH on both AIX/Solaris but it looks to be a problem with the way it was configured. directory? Again I am suspecting this for the reason that certain users when echoed do have a default home directory but has not been granted access to that machine and neither does the home directory exist.

Also I would like to expand on previous post with one more behavior for clarity which I had originally posted in the query:

Common LDAP -
--- non-existent user1 - echo ~user1 outputs ~user1
--- non-existent user2 - echo ~user2 - says non-existent user.
--- non-existent user3 - echo ~user3 outputs /home/user3 .

on the Solaris machine ?? If you have not ldaplist installed, you are unlikely to have any ldap authentication in the first place.
What directory server are you using ?
"non-existent" doesn't seem to appear in ksh error messages. What ksh version are you using ? Is this really the precise error message you get ? on Solaris ? What Solaris release ?

My bad - I didn't try that on Solaris - its available and I do get a response like below

Code:

+++ database=user1
+++ filter=objectclass=*
+++ template for merging SSD filter=%s
ldaplist: Object not found (LDAP ERROR (32): No such object.)

But this gives a valid output for getent. Is that same grepping the /etc/passwd file?

Directory Server as far as I know is a Windows AD server but not sure of the exact version.

The error message was something like no valid user. I am unable to reproduce that error message now it just prints ~xxxxx. So something has changed.

ksh version is M-11/16/88i and Solaris is 5.10.

getent is not the same as grepping /etc/password. getent looks to the backend databases listed in the /etc/nsswitch.conf files in order and report the first match, if any. Might be from /etc/passwd or not.

The ~xxxxx behavior is the one expected with unknown users.