"Piss on it"? That's a nice expression. I might try to include that in my expletive vocab!

A linux question now - if anyone's still reading this post - I understand that a list of executable files is stored in a PATH environment variable. Very useful I thought, but what if it gets lost/deleted? Can this happen and what if it does?

It's best to start a new thread if you have a new question, because more people who are likely to be able to answer it will see it.

I know the answer to this one so it's OK here.

You can execute any file if you change it's permissions to 0777 and use dotslash:

chmod 0777 myprog &&
./myprog

will execute it. However, if the directory is included in the PATH variable, it can be executed simple by typing it at the command line:

myprog

There's a bit more to it though, as the PATH variable store lists of directories, not files. You have to think about PATH variables from a security point of view, because say if some ne'erdogood were to write a nasty program called bash and put it in your home directory, if the home directory was listed before the /bin directory inb the PATH variable, then when you type 'bash', his program would execute, not the bash shell as you expected.

I think the tutorial BASH Progamming in the links section on this site mentions this (it should anyway)

Bert