On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 11:14 AM, Thomas Köhler
<jean-luc@picard.franken.de>wrote:

> I expect what you want is not
>   % pr=~/projects
>   % mydir="~pr"
> but
>   % pr=~/projects
>   % mydir="$pr"
> instead. Or you might want
>   % mydir=~/projects
>   % print ${mydir:a}
>
>
Thank you for your help, Thomas, but I believe my example obscured what I
am trying to do, so I will try to clarify with a better example. Consider
this zle widget that I believe I have picked up from this list:

current-argument-absolute-path() {
    modify-current-argument '$ARG:a'
}
zle -N current-argument-absolute-path
bindkey '\e+' current-argument-absolute-path

As its name implies, it takes the current word on the command line, and
replaces it with its corresponding absolute path. However, it does not work
for named directories. If I write ls ~<\e+> when standing in, say,
/usr/lib, it expands the "~" to "/usr/lib/~", not "/home/jesper". And the
same for named directories that I have defined myself. So my question is,
can I rewrite this function so that if what's on the command line is a
named directory, it is expanded into its correct absolute path? And I still
want it to work for arguments that are not named directories, of course.