Thread: strange problem

Try "./test" - perhaps current directory isn't part of your path to executables.

but more importantly, if you are using Unix/Linux or using a "unix shell" based shell, don't call your application test, as it's a shell-command called test that checks for properties of files (e.g. if test -f blah.txt ... will test if there is a "regular file called blah.txt"). Doing this is a bad thing.

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Mats

"echo $PATH" will also show the current path.

If you want to add "current directory" to the search-path, try something like this:

Code:

export PATH=${PATH}:./

Note that the curly brackets are necessary here, as otherwise the shell will not necessrily know how to separate the environment variable PATH from the bits you're adding to the path. It is optional to use curly braces when dealing with variables where there are white-spaces delimiting the name.

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Mats

Originally Posted by citizen

I don't think that adding dot-slash to your environment path is a capital idea. You should just type it yourself, or work "./cprog" into your makefile or a script if you're especially lazy.

I would certainly agree with that if you are root, or commonly run as root, because someone may insert a local file called "ls" or some such that does something other than what the standard ls command does (such as insert the username "newuser" as a "root" user in the passwd table).

If you are a "regular" user, there are cases where ./ is fine to have in the path - there is still some risk with it, but since regular users can't generally do too many bad things other than destroying their own files, it's not quite so bad.

I have certainly used a setup where ./ is in the path [at the back end tho', so if it hits anything else, it picks that first, not like Windows which applies ./ as the FIRST search path without any option to change it].

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Mats

I should, perhaps explain a bit further about my comments to citizen: It is not a good idea to "just add the current path to $PATH just like that". You should understand what that means, and consider the consequences.

In the last couple of years of working on Xen, I have almost consistently been running as root for practical reasons [ok to some extent "laziness"], and I'm so in the habit to type ./ in front of things that I've just built, that I often do that even on my Windows system. Of course it immediately spits back at me because the slash is the wrong way around :-(

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Mats