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lang-bash
..anything like$HOME?..can be at the start of a path passed directly to a system call, no shell expansion required. Such a path is not an absolute path; it's still relative to the process cwd or symlink location. Unless the author was trying to catch you out by talking about that literal string (without shell expansion) as a path. I think you're trying to make excuses for the book, but I'm more inclined to just say it's wrong and not let things get muddled.