CHAPTER 7
Treading a Righteous PATH
The PATH variable is a colon-separated list of directories that your shell will search for a command. It usually includes /bin, /usr/bin, and /usr/local/bin. If you are root, it will also include /sbin and /usr/sbin. There may be other directories, and there may even be a dot, which puts your current directory in the PATH. For example, a typical user’s $PATH looks like this:
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/games:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/chris/bin
Whenever you enter a command without a full path (e.g., ls instead of /bin/ls), the shell searches the directories listed in your PATH variable for the command. If all ...
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