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Re: Bizarre ls Behavior



Hendrik Sattler writes:
>Guessing: your $PATH contains "." before the "/bin"
>Bad thing!
>When in doubt: run /bin/ls instead of ls.

	Wow!  I've been doing UNIX for around 14 years and am flat
ashamed of myself.  I have now put . at the end of the path and, of
course it all works.  I have heard before that putting ones current
working directory first is bad, but I never quite understood why
because the examples I had heard were kind of a stretch in many cases
but this one shines like a light.

	As I originally said, these were all FreeBSD executables meant
to be the /bin file system for use in a rescue setting.  I just wanted
to look at them to make sure the image I had down-loaded was the right
one to use on some FreeBSD systems at work.  I just wasn't thinking at
all about the fact that the ls application in that directory would
certainly pipe up and try to run when I called for ls.  Oddly enough,
it silently exits.  Some of the other executables like date dump core
since they weren't designed to work in Linux.

	I think that is the first time I have ever been bitten by
putting the current WD first but it is a great lesson.

	Thank you even if I am a bit red in the face.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
OSU Information Technology Division Network Operations Group



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