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Background: One of my colleagues who doesn't come from a Linux background asked me about using ./ before some commands and not others, so I explained to him how PATH works and how binaries are chosen to be run. His response was that it was dumb and he just wanted to not need to type ./ before commands.

Question: Is there a way to easily modify the behavior of the shell such that $PWD is always the first item on PATH?

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  • Dumb it may (or may not) be, but every environment has it's quirks, and this is a typical Unix shell quirk.
    – RonJohn
    Oct 26, 2017 at 13:20
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    It's a security measure. Shells used to do this by default (think 1970s), and multi-user systems were widely attacked on account of it.
    – Charles Duffy
    Oct 26, 2017 at 17:31
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    His response was that it was dumb: said colleague needs to educate his/her own self on this topic. That off-the-cuff answer demonstrates a PHB-style response: no understanding or appreciation of the underlying system.
    – Cloud
    Oct 26, 2017 at 20:44
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    Why not just drop the binaries into ~/bin and make it part of PATH ? This keeps things organized ,too.
    – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
    Oct 26, 2017 at 23:04
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    @Ziazis on Windows, the current directory is considered regardless of whether it’s part of PATH (which is the usual source of such considerations).
    – Stephen Kitt
    Oct 27, 2017 at 9:58

3 Answers 3

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If you really want to, you can do this by prepending . to your path:

export PATH=".:$PATH"

However, that’s a bad idea, because it means your shell will pick any command in the current directory in preference to others. If someone (or some program) drops a malicious ls command in a directory you use frequently, you’re in for trouble...

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    This is an excellent point, although perhaps it would be sufficient to move the . to the end of the path then export PATH="$PATH:."
    – Christophe
    Oct 26, 2017 at 9:55
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    Indeed I remember having . at the beginning of your PATH was the default for normal users (if I created the user with "sam" on HP-UX, at least; I'm not sure about old SunOS). Later this default was removed for security reasons. If you have the . as the last item of your PATH, still someone can hope for typical typos.
    – Philippos
    Oct 26, 2017 at 10:49
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    @Philippos, yes like the infamous /tmp/sl prank scripts to target users with such PATHs. On Debian and derivatives, install the sl package to get an idea of how often you type sl in place of ls.
    – Stéphane Chazelas
    Oct 26, 2017 at 15:55
  • No, it is not a bad idea, it is a good one, especially if you're a developer. Of course, keeping an environment where no one drops in malicious commands is another good idea.
    – jamesqf
    Oct 26, 2017 at 18:27
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    @jamesqf, actually, it's a good idea to type out ./ when you want to call commands in the current directory. Or, if your usual current directory is /project/under/development/bin, then add that to your PATH. This solves your developer use case. Putting . at the start of your PATH is a bad idea, period.
    – Wildcard
    Oct 26, 2017 at 19:58
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Although this is not a direct answer to your question, best practice would be to create a bin directory in your home directory as /home/user/bin:

mkdir -p "$HOME/bin"
echo 'PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> "$HOME/.bashrc"
source "$HOME/.bashrc"

Have your personal scripts put in there. The PATH would be traversed in the order you define it and execute your personal scripts without the . needed.

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You need to have the . in the beginning of your PATH variable:

export PATH=".:$PATH"
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