I have a file on this path: ~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt

But when i try to write or check if it exist:

fs.existsSync('~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt')

It always return false

If I do in terminal:

$ nano ~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt

This works fine

I have a file on this path: ~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt

But when i try to write or check if it exist:

fs.existsSync('~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt')

It always return false

If I do in terminal:

$ nano ~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt

This works fine

• javascript
• node.js
• path
• fs

3 Answers 3

You can replace ~ with dynamically fetched homedir using const homedir = require('os').homedir();.

So instead of:

fs.existsSync('~/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt')

You could do something like:

const homedir = require('os').homedir();
fs.existsSync(homedir + '/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt')

Hope it helps!

I don't think using ~ to reference a users' Home directory is supported in Node. As there is no equivalent mand in Windows.

You can follow this thread for the plete discussion. https://github./nodejs/node/issues/684

For the Time being you can use untildify npm package for your needs.

~ is special to the shell (terminal process), expanding to the current home directory, but it is not special otherwise. You'll need to use an absolute path, or a relative path (relative to the process).

For instance, assuming ~ maps to /home/arti:

fs.existsSync('/home/arti/Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt')

Or if you're running the process in ~/example, then this relative path would work:

fs.existsSync('../Downloads/flightlog_2017-71-19_19747.txt')