problem with bash -- probably

[jebstar@groupz.net]

I'm new to the Debian community. I've used Slackware before.  
Debian's package tools are reasonably good. I found it easy to 
install.  But a few things are definitely different.... like the 
standard shell environment setups are stripped bare.

I'm running the Debian system from a network terminal.

I thought bash always prepended the pwd to the commands so that it 
would always find a shell script in the current directory. In the 
.bash_profile for my user login shell, I set the path as follows:

PATH='/usr:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:.'

The "." at the end was to try to ensure the current directory always 
got searched.

When I try to run a Perl script in the current directory that starts 
with: 

#!/usr/bin/perl5

I get nothing if I'm running as a user. If I'm running su, then I get 
"command not found"

If I type the full path name to the script in the current directory, 
then the perl scripts work as expected EXCEPT that any statement in 
the script that assumes the current working directory as the source 
fails.

Is this a bug in Perl or bash? Is my environment set up wrong?

Is there any place the overall organization of Debian is explained? 
 
Debian has taken pains to standardize a lot of things like 
configurations, but it really different from anything I've used 
before, and I've not found any documentation to explain it.  Simple 
things, like I want to login as 'root' vs. 'su' from a remote 
terminal. I'm sure there's a way to do this. I read the configuration 
files, but didn't see how to do this. 

I hope somebody can help here.  Having used Debian, I don't want to 
go back to Slackware.

JEB







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