tilde char on IDLE 3.2.2 MacOS-X Lion
I often have the same problem as well - my IDLE crashes immediately when I am trying to use Option-N.
If you want to use it in a string, you can replace it using
"\x007E"instead of
"~"Unfortunately, if you want to use it in your code, for example as a bitwise NOT operation, this is not possible either.Try opening another program (your browser, TextEdit or any other software which supports using Option-N), type the tilde char there and copy it into idle.