UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am a corporate user of Solaris ?? I have to write a lot of scripts to do little repetitive actions. To make this easier I would like to set the PATH so that I do not have to type ./ first before the script name.

Is there an easy script that will allow me to set this path when I log in???

My current path is;
$echo $PATH
/opt/jre1.2.2_05a/bin:/usr/dt/bin:/usr/openwin/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/openwin/bin:/opt/oracle/7.3.4/bin:/app/icop/aircrews/CIP/bin:/app/icop/aircrews/COP/bin:/usr/local/bin

I approached our sys admin people and they advised that this was set up to stop people writing scripts with the same name as existing scripts, lame yeah.
I would ideally like to edit the .bash_profile with ./~ but they will not allow that either.

HELP Please!!!

If you REALLY need it, create a script that changes your PATH to include your complete home path (ie. /home/username/bin) instead of . - this will at the least keep you from running the wrong scripts. You would then have to run . /home/username/myscript4path to source it to your process.

#!/bin/ksh
export PATH=$PATH:/home/username/bin
exit

(Sorry, haven't messed with bash - should be close though)

Well, if you've been told not to change your PATH, then you perhaps should not do that. If I have a script in my home directory, I use ./script too. But I do it for security. And I have to say that typing ./ does not bother me. But you can avoid that without changing your PATH.

If you use the command:
alias script=/full/path/to/script
then from now on, you can just use "script" to run the command.

alias commands can be put in your .bash_profile file. I wasn't clear if you are allowed to edit that file at all. You could just put your alias commands in a file called "setup" or something. And then use this command:
. ./setup
to cause your shell to process that file. Note that leading dot. This is a little different than running a script. A dot command causes the current shell to read commands from the named file.

So give aliases a try. You get the result you wanted: no leading ./ required. And the sysadmins are happy since you are using the prescribed PATH.