What is the meaning of ~ in ~/somefolder?

Question

I've been told to go to ~/.ssh and, actually, I did cd ~/.ssh and I got into it.

However, I'm wondering: what does the ~ mean in this context?

Answer 1

~ = $HOME = your home directory

The next commands will change to your home directory /home/david if your username is david:

cd
cd ~
cd $HOME
cd /home/david
cd ~david

Answer 2

You can also use ~username (no slash) to have it lookup the home directory of a user; that is, ~khamer resolves to /home/khamer, whereas ~david would resolve to /home/david regardless of who is typing the command.

Answer 3

If you type:

cd ~/

and hit TAB, the command should change to the actual path to your home folder. As far as I know, this works with pretty much any command that takes a path as an argument.