AIDER_READ environment variable does not have the same behavior as /read/

[Trolann]

Issue

I have created a conventions file .aider.guidelines in my home directory next to my .env file.

AIDER_READ=~/.aider.guidelines

When starting up, I receive the following error
Error: Read-only file /home/user/repo/~/.aider.guidelines does not exist. Skipping.

Setting AIDER_READ=../.aider.guidelines does work, but will obviously break if my repo is not in my home dir.

This is not a duplicate of #1155; the /read ~/.aider.guidelines works perfectly. The AIDER_READ= variable does not. How can this be fixed?

Version and model info

Aider v0.64.2.dev90+g13c5bfdd
Main model: claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 with diff edit format, infinite output
Weak model: claude-3-5-haiku-20241022
Git repo: .git with 50 files
Repo-map: using 1024 tokens, auto refresh