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From: jtc@rtl.cygnus.com (J.T. Conklin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc
Subject: Re: To run programs from prompt...
Date: 12 Aug 1996 19:04:01 -0700
Organization: Cygnus Support
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <tj7mr4ghv2.fsf@rtl.cygnus.com>
References: <4ul1eq$927@tribune.usask.ca> <v620hdm8ry.fsf@kechara.flame.org>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rtl.cygnus.com
In-reply-to: Michael Graff's message of 12 Aug 1996 02:11:29 -0400
X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1
>> Can anyone tell me how to run progs. from unix prompt for BSD 2.0 system
>> so I don't have to type ./filename on my account?
> This should be in almost all unix newbie books. Get one. ;)
> Answer: Add . to your path.
And then in the next chapter, a good unix newbie book should tell
users to remove "." from their path --- so that they aren't tricked
into running a trojan "ls", "more", "mroe" or some other program that
some evil user has stuffed in /tmp or some such publicly writable
directory that users are likely to visit.
Putting the dot at the end of your PATH offers some protection from
this, but I'm more comfortable omitting it alltogether.
--jtc