Practical UNIX

Running Your Scripts Without a Pathname

If you use your script frequently, there are ways to invoke it by just typing the script name, without having to cd to its directory or enter a full pathname. To run a script without having to enter a pathname, the directory that contains the script must be listed in your PATH variable. You can either add the directory of the script to PATH or move the script to a directory that is already in PATH.

Continuing the example from the previous section, assume that your script viemp is in the directory /usr/fred/bin. You can add /usr/fred/bin to PATH like this:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/fred/bin

Having done this, you can invoke viemp like this:

viemp

You don’t have to be in that directory or enter a pathname to run this ...