in my path???
 

I am very new to linux and am catching on fairly quickly. But the folks I work with who are old UNIX folks (all 50 + years old) use lingo that confuses me.

I tried to run a command with one of them over my shoulder.

They said "You do not have to type all that it is in your path".

What the heck does that mean? I dont have to specify a path to a file if it is in my path? How do I know what is in my path? and what exactly is my path?

Confused!! :)

Thanks in advance.

PATH is an environment variable used to store a list of directories in which the shell looks for commands (executables). To see the list of directories listed in your PATH, run "echo $PATH" in a terminal (without quotes). FWIW, Windows also has an environment variable called PATH.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Path.html

Your $PATH is basically a list of directories that the command line will look for when you type a one word command. For example, if /usr/bin is in your PATH and there is a program /usr/bin/firefox, you can just type firefox because it will look in /usr/bin for that program. If /usr/bin is not in your path and you type firefox, then it will return a "command not found" type error.

Ahh thank you, can you add a specific directory to your path?

Yes, of course you can. How you do so depends on the kind of shell you're using.

For bash and sh (possibly ksh as well, I'm not sure): export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/new/directory

For (t)csh (and whatever shells use the same syntax): setenv PATH {$PATH}:/path/to/new/directory

To add to the end of the path

By the way, you weren't actually wrong to use an absolute path, just could have saved a few keystrokes

Well I thank you fine folks again, not only have I found a new interest in this open source community for its functionality but also because the people involved are so quick to help and share knowledge! Thanks again

To make the change permanent between reboots, you have to add it to your profile or .bashrc (I think it differs depending on the distribution).