On 21 Apr 99, at 12:43, David Hurst wrote:

> I am running win 95 and have a number of files that have a tilde
> (~) in them somewhere, sometimes as part of the file name..
> sometimes as part of the extension, but not necessarily the last
> character.  Can these be safely deleted ?

  Not as such a general rule.  The tilde is a valid character for inclusion
in filenames.

  Some components of MS Office make a "working copy" of a document by
replacing the first character with a tilde; presumably, they have some
alternative plan for files whose names actually begin with a tilde.  [These
are generally easy to spot because they're in the same folder as the
original.]
  Some programs, especially installers, create their temporary files in \temp
or \tmp or \windows\temp with names beginning with "~", purely by convention.
  Tilde is also used, by default, in forming the short (8.3) name from a long
filename.  If files have been copied, backed up and restored, downloaded, or
otherwise lost their long filenames, these short names may become visible.

  There are probably other, less widespread, conventions about use of tilde
in Windows filenames (it has additional meanings under Unix, and you may
encounter these on Windows-based internet servers...).
  You cannot assume that the presence of a tilde, in general, indicates an
unneeded file.


David G

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