> At 11:10 AM 9/15/2005, you wrote: > >Hi, > > > >I just discovered that . (current directory) is in my PATH. I installed > >cygwin on my new laptop some weeks ago. I don't think . was in my PATH on > >my old PC. First I thought it came from my windows PATH, but it does not. > > > >Is . normally in the PATH (it was not on a few solaris systems I just > >checked, but that does not prove anything).
On Windows, . is always in your path (stupid, but true). In POSIX, . is only in PATH if you put it there. However, POSIX states that a leading or trailing :, or doubled :: in the middle of your PATH implies `.' on your PATH. Furthermore, when cygwin translates your Windows %PATH% into the POSIX PATH, it treats ; as :. There are several Windows programs that are rather unfriendly in how they modify %PATH% on installation, such that you are left with trailing or duplicate ;, which is why you might be seeing . in your PATH even though you don't remember putting it there. > > > >It is even twice in my PATH, as the last entry, and just after > >/cygdrive/c/Infoprint. > > > > '.' is typically not put in the path by default for security reasons. On the other hand, I like having it in my PATH (okay, so I'm asking for problems security-wise), but ONLY when it is the LAST entry, because it saves me two characters when typing configure instead of ./configure (on the other hand, if I were truly lazy, I'd create 'alias conf=./configure' and have even less to type without having to put . on my PATH). The security problem is that if . appears before absolute directories, then if you cd to a directory where you have a program of the same name (think ls), you invoke ./ls instead of the intended /bin/ls. Classic trojan horse, if you weren't the author of ./ls. BTW, 'find -execdir' will complain and fail if . is in your PATH, so choose your battles. -- Eric Blake -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Problem reports: http://cygwin.com/problems.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/
