Just a little message concerning something quite puzzling that happended to me : I'm working with csh shells and had to install
Mandrake 8.1 on two different computers. On one of them, I can call the csh scripts simply by their name and on the other one I need to put the ./ sign before the name, otherwise it says something like bad interpreter.

Has anyone an idea why it's happening ,

sandrine (puzzled)

What really happens is that when I log in the first time, I cannot launch a csh script without the ./ before the name of the script.
Then, I change the shell with the command chsh -s /bin/csh username,
andd I have to log in again so that the changes are taken into account...
Is there a file that I can configure so that I don't need to log in again everytime I want my scripts to be executed correctly ?

Thanks

Some things you might want to check:

To be able to execute files in the current directory without the ./ then you either have to add the directory to your path or add . to the path.

Make sure the user who is trying to start it has execute permissions on the script. Only read permissions sometimes gives the message "bad interpreter".

Also make sure the first line of the script looks like this:
#!/bin/csh

Hi, I'm not trying to discourage you from placing your current directory (.) in your path, but some will consider it to be a security breach. The reason for this is that when your current directory is not in your path, then some Linux distros force you to enter it prior to executing a script. Say you decide to add the current directory to your path, and for some reason someone tampers into your system and places a script ( for malicious purpose ) and names it, say , cd . We both know that cd is a Linux command, but here is the kicker. Since the "bad" script is named cd, and assuming the current directory is defined in the PATH, then Linux will execute the script and not the actual command. I personally don't mind taking the extra key strokes to put ./ for executing my scripts.

Thanks, I see what you mean but the thing is that even in my current directory I have to specify ./ before a script so that it is interpreted...

My point exactly! If the current directory is not defined in PATH then one must type ./ before a script. What typing ./ does is " Ok shell, look in the current directory . / and find script [script] and execute" when current directory is defined in PATH then this is what you are doing " Ok shell you already know to look in the current directory (. already defined in PATH) exeucte script [script]"

thanks a lot for your help. It did help

Sandrine