> -----Original Message-----
> From: cygwin-owner On Behalf Of Rocket Boy
> Sent: 11 May 2004 18:44
> This indeed appears to be the problem. I figured it
> something that basic. Though I searched the web for
> days I couldn't find the same symptoms discussed
> elsewhere.
>
> The FAQ says that it is not recommended to add . to
> $PATH. Anyone, know a compelling reason not to?
It's a security measure for the medium-to-fairly paranoid. :-O
Basically it protects you against the possibility that some virus/trojan
might e.g. dump a copy of itself under the filename 'ls' into your home dir
or somewhere. If you had '.' in the $PATH, as soon as you log in and run
ls, you'd end up executing the trojanned version; if you don't have . in
your $PATH, you know for sure that you'll always be executing the version in
/bin, which presumably (on a well secured system) will be read-only to
everyone except root, and hence less likely to have been trojanned/infected.
cheers,
DaveK
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