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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: Multiple executables in path (Was: NON-SOURCE POSTINGS CONSIDERED HARMFUL!)
Message-ID: <17687:Jan2414:33:5091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 24 Jan 91 14:33:50 GMT
References: <8807@star.cs.vu.nl> <9688:Jan2313:09:4391@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <8833@star.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: IR
Lines: 26

In article <8833@star.cs.vu.nl> maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
> I like a `which' that gives the right answer all the time, that is, the
> answer to the following question:
> 	When I type a command, say `foo', which file will be executed?

#!/bin/csh
setenv WD "`pwd`"
ls -dFL `echo "$PATH" | tr : '\012' | sed -e 's:^\.$:'"$WD": -e 's:$:/'"$1": -e 's:^:/.[.]:'`\
  | sed -e 's:/\.\./:/:g' -e 's:^'"$WD"'/:./:g' -e 's/*$//p' | head -1

If this is missing any features you want, just say what they are. On
systems without symbolic links you probably have to leave out the -L;
other than that this should be reasonably portable.

(I agree, btw, that it's worth rewriting something like this in C if the
shell script isn't efficient enough.)

> )It is a mistake to have . (or any other relative directories, if your
> )system supports them) in your path.
> Nonsense.  It's a mistake to put `.' _before_ the standard directories.
> In my PATH `.' is the very last component.

Ah, so the moment you make a typing mistake you execute anybody's
program?

---Dan