Home Directory Path Shortcut doesn't work in Linux

[fubuloubu]

• Version: 4.4.0
• Python: 3.6.5 (P.S. this field is old!)
• OS: linux

What was wrong?

In linux, the home directory path shortcut ~ doesn't work

w3 = Web3(Web3.IPCProvider("/home/bryant/.ethereum/testnet/geth.ipc")); w3.isConnected()
True

w3 = Web3(Web3.IPCProvider("~/.ethereum/testnet/geth.ipc")); w3.isConnected()
False

How can it be fixed?

[pipermerriam]

I think we recently merged #921 which allows for pathlib.Path objects. I think what we need to do now, is invert that and do the following.

if isinstance(ipc_path, str):
    ipc_path = pathlib.Path(ipc_path)
elif not isinstance(ipc_path, pathlib.Path):
    raise TypeError("helpful error message about what types are accepted")

ipc_path_str = ipc_path.expanduser().resolve()

This should handle conversion to an absolute path as well as handling ~.