That is false.
There is a variable (name: PATH) which will hold a list of directories where the specified executable should be placed. Otherwise it will not be found. The current dir is not in the list (by default).
From the other hand an adb.exe is a windows executable and cannot be executed in a linux box. This is simply a different OS, using different kind of binaries/executables. Trying to install windows programs on linux is just pointless (there is only one [a few] exception, if you want to run it in a windows emulator - this is called Wine).
Kali is definitely not designed to [be able to] run wine and windows executables.

Okay first, thanks for the response.

Second, I think I may have found the problem; the reason why "adb" results in "command not found".

http://bugs.kali.org/view.php?id=135

So, from this my theory is that the abd.exe is a legit linux file, but it won't execute because it needs this "ia32-libs", which I assume is a library. Either that or I somehow managed to download extract the ABD for Windows instead of the ABD for Linux. And/or maybe you are correct on the whole question of whether or not a linux executable will run from the current directory when terminal is set for the current directory. That seems very counter-intuitive to me, but on the chance that you are correct, I'll continue trying to figure out how to modify the ".bash_profile" file. At this point, I question if it even exists on Kali. Thus far I've not found a resource that explicitly aays that Kali even has a .bash_profile file.


I'll re-download the ADB for Linux package and extract it, and see if that makes a difference.

......

. . .