Notable bash $PATH behavior trivia

[Erik Price]

Useful, I didn't know that.  Thanks.


Erik

Michael O'Donnell wrote:
> I just noticed that I was able to execute
> programs in the current directory without
> prefixing their names with ./ and without
> having . in my $PATH.  After saying WTF?
> a number of times I finally figured out that
> it's related to my PATH being defined with
> a leading colon, sorta like this:
> 
>    export PATH=:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr:local/bin
> 
> ...so those of you who (for security reasons) are
> careful to exclude "." from your $PATH need also
> be careful about leading colons, apparently...
> 
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