-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 11:25:30PM +1100, David wrote: > On 27 March 2017 at 22:39, Richard Owlett <rowl...@cloud85.net> wrote: > >> On 03/27/2017 01:14 PM, Richard Owlett wrote: > > *Please avoid trying to briefly explain.* > > *_Please refer me to a good web page._
Sorry, richard: no web page, but perhaps something to start: ./ means "HERE" ~/ means "HOME" You can move to other places with "cd" and ask where you are currently with "pwd" or "echo $CWD", but your home stays at "/home/richard" -- or wherever it is. > http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unix1.html > http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unix2.html > > Sections 1.4, 1.6 part 2, and 2.1 demonstrate use of '.' and '~' to > represent directory names. > > To the best of my knowledge, '.' is intrinsic to the filesystem Yes and no (see below) > design, whereas expansion of '~' is handled by your shell. Yes. The shell expands ~ to your current *home* directory (and it expands ~foo to foo's home directory). Now to the "yes and no": yes: every directory has two entries: ".", which resolves to the directory itself, and "..", which resolves to the directory's parent. This is the "intrinsic" part, i.e. the "yes" part. To the "no" part: in the shell, names of files are often resolved using some default mechanism. If you invoke a command, then (unless it's a shell builtin), the shell looks for this command as an executable in one of the directories listed in the shell environment variable PATH. Unless you give an explicit directory, as in "foo/command", where the shell would look in directory foo (relative to the current working directory, CWD [1]). Thus, ./command would look in the current working directory. > I hope someone else here will correct or elaborate that statement if > necessary. So yes, correct, but some further explanation might help in understanding how to use it in a shell. regards [1] Of course, if you start your path with /, it's an absolute path, like /usr/local/bin/foo/command. - -- tomás -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAljZCdMACgkQBcgs9XrR2kYn2ACcD3n8rX7DGK6ODY+XYt+ni6+N 0pAAn0IiFfFlpgrcGgAwb52n/9Uypqch =B3UM -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
