Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!convex!usenet From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell Subject: Re: Dot in PATH? Message-ID: <1991Jan28.015829.23942@convex.com> Date: 28 Jan 91 01:58:29 GMT References: <1991Jan24.221552.5906@bradley.bradley.edu> <5528@auspex.auspex.com> <1991Jan28.003846.25111@bradley.bradley.edu> Sender: usenet@convex.com (news access account) Reply-To: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) Distribution: comp Organization: CONVEX Software Development, Richardson, TX Lines: 29 Nntp-Posting-Host: pixel.convex.com From the keyboard of data@buhub (Mark Hall): :In <5528@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: : :> You thought incorrectly; UNIX shells, and the "exec[lv]p()" routines, :> check only if "." is in the current command search path. : :Well, let me show you something: : :in my .profile is this path command: : :> PATH=:/usr/lbin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:$HOME:$HOME/BIN:$HOME/USR:/usr/tmp:/tmp:/tmp/talk: : :if I run a program in the current directory (and it's not in my path command) :my shell looks in the current directory FIRST. This is also the way MS-DOS :works, but that's a different notes-group. This is why I made the original :comment. I grant that other shells may not work this way (I'm not saying that :they have to be alike), but my shell DOES treat my commands this way. :BTW: I'm running UNIX SYSTEM V v3.2(i think) The colons in your path are not delimiters, but separators. The somewhat subtle difference is that in yours, you have a leading and trailing null element in your list. POSIX-incompliant systems have historically interpreted null as dot. ---tom -- "Hey, did you hear Stallman has replaced /vmunix with /vmunix.el? Now he can finally have the whole O/S built-in to his editor like he always wanted!" --me (Tom Christiansen )