Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: FOLLOW-UP: Microsoft C V5.1 Setup Warning
Message-ID: <22258@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 1 May 88 23:40:34 GMT
References: <1455@slvblc.UUCP> <1468@slvblc.UUCP> <146@atpal.UUCP>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 23

In article <146@atpal.UUCP> tneff@atpal.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
|>I do, indeed, begin my PATH with a directory of '.',
|>so at least now I know where that damned '[.]' came from. ...
|
|This begs the question, why did you put "." in your PATH in the first place?
|MS-DOS always searches your current directory (denoted ".") for executables
|before searching the directories listed in the PATH environment variable.

MS-DOS doesn't search the path, the program trying to exec another
program does (eg command.com).  Some of us hated command.com and
switched to something else a long time ago.  In my case it was a shell
that DIDN'T search '.' unless you placed it in your path.  I think
you'll agree that this is a useful function when your "PC" is
multiuser.  (Ours has 9 loosely-couple CPUs, so I'm not so sure it
should be called a PC anymore.)

|Thus saying PATH=.;<other directories> forces DOS to search your current
|directory TWICE for programs stored elsewhere.

Agreed.  A less-than-useful concept on a floppy-based 8086 system. :-)

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu