Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!usenet.rpi.edu!tale
From: tale@rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: alt.sources.d
Subject: Re: Multiple executables in path
Message-ID: <VG8^QK&@rpi.edu>
Date: 25 Jan 91 08:58:25 GMT
References: <1991Jan22.053747.14144@convex.com> <5570@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
	<1991Jan22.220246.9920@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <5612@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Computer Science, Troy NY
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Nntp-Posting-Host: cs.rpi.edu

In <5612@idunno.Princeton.EDU> pfalstad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Paul Falstad):

   The ~ is expanded only for the first component in the PATH, not for the
   remaining components.  Bash handles this fine, of course, but execlp
   does not.

Not only that, ~ also isn't _always_ expanded if first.  Try VAR=~:~.
It only seems to do it if ~ is followed by a username or by /.

Many moons ago I just decided to use this in every login shell
environment I had to set my environment variables:

function tilde { echo "$@" | /usr/bin/tr ' ' : }
PATH=`tilde ~tale/bin /usr/local/gnu/bin /usr/bin/X11 /usr/local/bin /usr/etc /usr/bin /usr/ucb /bin  /usr/5bin ~weltyc/bin .`

Used similary for MANPATH, TEXINPUTS, et cetera.

The "function" part has changed for each flavour of shell, but the
basic method is there.
--
   (setq mail '("tale@cs.rpi.edu" "tale@ai.mit.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))