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 the directories you need are not included, commands will not be found. If the current directory is included, ...
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