PATH oddity

[Williams, Gerald S (Jerry)]

Karl M wrote:
>>> While looking at my PATH environment variable (in response to the
>>> recent postings about sshd and environment variables), I noticed
>>> that "." was included. 
>>> 
>>> It was caused by a double ; ( a ";;" sequence) in my PATH as
>>> defined in the Windows XP My Computer Properties panel.

Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote:
>> This has been discussed here before; IIRC (and I may not), the . is
>> the equivalent of what windows does.  An empty entry in the windows
>> path (;; in the middle or ; at the beginning or end) makes it search
>> the current directory.

If that is the meaning under Windows, it would be meaningless
in practice since Windows searches the current directory first.
However, under bash (and other shells that I'm familiar with)
an empty entry is the same as ".".

I guess it depends on your POV, but being able to specify the
current directory in your Windows PATH, even though it is only
meaningful under Cygwin, could be a useful feature.

gsw


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