setting bash to look in current directory before searching the path
 

why doesn't bash look first in the current directory for an executable 'foo' but searches the path and returns an error when the current directory is not listed?

how can I change that?

Just add the current directory to your path:
PATH=".:"$PATH

hm... ok that'll do it. thanks

but what do I need to do in order to tell bash to remember my settings?

Add them to the bash startup scripts, ~/.bash_profile for login shells and ~/.bashrc for non-login shells (what I do is just have my .bash_profile source .bashrc so I don't need to duplicate stuff).