about PATH

tarata · 01-30-2005, 12:10 PM

hello I would like to ask
for example if my PATH variable is set like this
/usr/dir01:/usr/dir02
so it will search files in dir01 first,
but if I have the same program but in 2 versions, one in dir01, and another in dir02, if I want it to excute the one in dir02, but dont want to alter the PATH to /usr/dir02:/usr/dir01, so can I just only set a particular path to a particular program ?
thanks

david_ross · 01-30-2005, 12:15 PM

Welcome to LQ.

PATH can only be used to store directory names. You could create an alias to get around the problem:
alias myprog="/usr/dir02/myprog"

Oliv' · 01-30-2005, 12:22 PM

Hi,

As David_ross says: you can choose the alias way... or a similar tip is to launch your prog with full path and a last solution is to use a symbolic link:
ln -s /usr/dir02/my-prog /usr/dir01/my-prog2
and you run it as my-prog2

Oliv'

tarata · 01-30-2005, 12:50 PM

Hello, thank you very much, seems like I have a long way to learn ^^
just started to use linux, complicated but fun