Oh - I hadn't realized we were golfing. In Unix, as in Perl, TMTOWTDI.

# Bourne shell and derivatives
fname=`eval echo $fname`
# Modern shells (e.g., Bash)
fname=${fname/\~/$HOME}
[download]

Your turn, m'sieu? :)

-- 
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. -- HG Wells