Often, paths to various things are supplied with a user shortcut, such as ~/.stackrc. However, some tasks may require the full path to the file. Rather than the complicated command and register calls, the expanduser filter provides a way to expand the path to the full definition. In this example, the username is jfreeman:

---
- name: demo the filters
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: false
  tasks:
    - name: demo filter
      debug:
        msg: "{{ '~/.stackrc' | expanduser }}"

The output is shown in the following screenshot:

We have successfully expanded the path here, which could be useful for creating configuration files or performing other file operations that might need an absolute rather than a relative path name.