Shell scripts running from /usr/local/bin - what did I forget to do?
 

I haven't done shell scripting in a long while, and so I may have overlooked something. I need a second (or third or fourth) pair of eves.

I have written a shell script:
I have saved the shell script as the file /usr/local/bin/latexme. It is world-executable.
The directory /usr/local/bin is in my path.
So, logically, I should see this when run from a directory:
Instead, I get:
However, this works:
What obvious thing did I miss? For what it's worth, I'm using TCSH shell, and my distro is RHEL 5.

Ummm

What shell are you using?

$path isn't meaningful in any shell I've come across, and
$PATH should contain a colon-separated list of paths.



Cheers,
Tink

I'm using tcsh:

You're right, $path should be $PATH, but that doesn't affect anything other than display.

Hmmm ... dunno; try using a sensible shell for a test. ;}

No need to be snarky :P

It works under bash. Why it doesn't work in tcsh I don't know.

Your script begins with '#!/bin/bash' but you are not using a BASH shell to launch the script. It seems that your shell (tcsh) passes the lower-case $path to the launched 'bash' instance, which within the bash realm yields an empty string. Could be that tcsh only maintains $path as an environment variable, and the $PATH output is rather a helpful hint from tcsh (clearly - I have no idea).

The fact that launching the script by full pathname works OK indicates that this is related to $path/$PATH in some way.

By replacing the slashbang to '#!/bin/sh' you might get different results, because 'sh' is usually a link to the default shell executable - on many system it defaults to bash, but that's not carved in stone.

linux

I tried #!/bin/sh but that doesn't fit the issue; it still says that the command is not found.

On the $path vs. $PATH issue, I'm not exactly sure why it could be the source of the problem. Other executables run from the /usr/local/bin directory without the full path in the command line.

And.. it's fixed.

Apparenly the thing I forgot to do is to rehash. After a logout and login unrelated to this script issue, it suddenly started to work.

Edit: didn't see your fix before posting. That's ok. Normal behaviour in tcsh.