Oh My Gosh this question is probably so ridiculously simple. I expect that I am missing something super basic.

I have Ubuntu installed along with Win10 on my laptop. I do not remember the details on how I did that, but if you need to know, I will try. When I start the laptop I get a menu to either run ubuntu by default, or select windows as the third option of four.

I downloaded a zipped file from
https://github.com/abiusx/L3D
and extracted it using windows, then copied to a thumb drive and then I fired up Ubuntu and copied it to the ubuntu desktop.

The readme.txt tells me:

***
To run the system and generate a tree, simply do the following:

./run L++/tree.l++
***

I can navigate thru directories and there is a file called tree.l++ in a directory called l++

I can change permissions and give files r/w/x permission

The syntax of the following:
./run
is the mystery. I get nothing from google searches on that syntax.

There is a file called run.sh in the same master folder as the l++ folder. This looks to me like a red herring: the file extension is .sh, not .exe or .a

I apologize if I am not giving enough info.

How do I run this thing? What does it mean *exactly* when it tells me to "simply do the following"?

You first need to un-zip the archive to your hard drive. Then open a terminal window, navigate to the folder that you un-zipped the archive you have downloaded to, and type the following commands:

The first command there will give it "execute" permission and the second command will hopefully run the program.

Thanks!

So a file with a .sh extension will run?

I will go try that, brb

The .sh means it's a shell script file - it's a script, so yes, it will run once you give it "execute" permission. .exe files are Windows executable's and mean nothing to Linux, as they are not Linux executable's - executable files in Linux don't normally have any file extension.

The ./ means it's in the folder you're currently sitting in at the command-line.

1 members found this post helpful.

You may not need to uncompress the package if you obtained it using git. But you have to be in the same directory as run.sh in order for './run.sh' to work. The dot means 'current directory'. Otherwise, to run programs not in your path, you must add the path.

Isn't that what I already said in post #4 ?? Why do you keep invading nearly every thread to repeat what others have already said ??

Sorry for the delay, my weekend got highjacked 5 minutes after I typed 'brb'.

That worked of course, thanks very much. Unfortunately there was an error in executing the code but that is another story.