Is the "./" statement just a throwback?

jtshaw · 03-12-2011, 10:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rkelsen

If you use the CLI long enough, you will find the need for absolute addressing.

I totally agree. Say I'm working on a system which has a perl script sitting in some folder which is in the path. Say this system also has "." in the path. Now I decided to copy that perl script into my home directory to add some feature to it. If I just type blah.pl while I'm sitting in my home directory which one am I running? In situations where the answer might be ambiguous (based on the order of the PATH in this case) using the absolute reference of ./blah.pl makes sense.

Peverel · 03-16-2011, 09:59 AM

As far as I know, the only use of ./ is in running an executable from the current directory. If I want to copy a file, I type something like:

cp fred jim

If I want to test a new variant called cp in my current directory, I type:

./cp fred jim

If . were included in PATH, then

cp fred jim

would run the local code, not the system command. This gives an interesting opportunity for hackers for installation of malicious code.

Telengard · 03-16-2011, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peverel

If . were included in PATH, then

cp fred jim

would run the local code, not the system command. This gives an interesting opportunity for hackers for installation of malicious code.

I wonder whether or not that is the reason . is not included in $PATH by default.