Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!bu-cs!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!urbsdc!aglew
From: aglew@urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Finding where an executable was run
Message-ID: <57900013@urbsdc>
Date: 21 May 88 04:25:00 GMT
References: <4527@hoptoad.uucp>
Lines: 17
Nf-ID: #R:hoptoad.uucp:4527:urbsdc:57900013:000:771
Nf-From: urbsdc.Urbana.Gould.COM!aglew    May 20 23:25:00 1988


>	"This would make lots of application programs easier to
>	install; you just copy it into somewhere on your PATH and it
>	will run."
>
>If an application uses this scheme to find its associated files, some
>useful Unix idioms cease to work.  For example, say that "rn" lives in
>/usr/news, but I don't want /usr/news in my PATH (too many nasty
>commands are also there).  At present I can put a link to /usr/news/rn
>in a directory that is in my path (e.g., my local bin).  With the
>proposed scheme, that would cause rn to look in my_local_bin/lib/* for
>its data files instead of in /usr/news/lib/*.
>
>  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!tekecs!andrew)       [UUCP]

Easy enough to do a readlink(), if you have used a symlink to place
the command on your path.