Is it unsafe to put your own home directory (a regular user) in your search path? I am writing useful shell scripts, but don't have the permissions to put them in /usr/bin. (Korn shell)

thanks

In general, it is no less safe than anything
else. Just follow certain rules. You will want
to "append" this to the default PATH.

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME

What you don't want to happen is you don't
want to run you own version of commands.
For instance, if you had your own "ps" command
you would not want that one to be found in the
search path first.

A very common thing to do is create your own bin directory in your $HOME, so you can keep files seperate. I do this on nearly all of my account, both regular and root.

mkdir $HOME/bin
chmod 700 $HOME/bin
PATH=${PATH}:/$HOME/bin

Then add that PATH addition to your .profile (or .bash_profile if needed) to make it work every time you log in. The reason I suggest the added bin directory is to keep your scripts / programs you want to use regularly seperate from test scripts, and other file that may interfere.

Besides, it's just plain cool to have your own bin directory