Re: [BUG] $PATH not fully searched

[Joshua Nelson <jynelson@email.sc.edu>]

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This was precisely the problem! Thanks so much for your help,
I changed the relevant parts of ~/.profile to "$HOME/<path>" instead.

On Wednesday, January 10, 2018 23:18:15 EST Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 01:36:18PM -0500, Joshua Nelson wrote:
> > I've come across an error with the PATH variable in `dash`. Instead of
> > fully searching PATH for commands, dash will respond 'command not
> > found' if `command -p <executable>` fails.  The same command works
> > fine in Bash.
> > 
> > The following example was performed in a live cd of Debian 9.1 Stretch
> > (run in a virtual machine), with dash version 0.5.8-2.4:
> > 
> > ```bash
> > user@debian:~$ PATH="~/my_bin:$PATH" dash
> > $ echo $PATH
> > ~/my_bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games
> > $ ls -l ~/my_bin/list
> > -rwxr--r-- 1 user user 18 Jan 10 17:42 /home/user/my_bin/list
> > $ list
> > dash: 3: list: not found
> > $ exit
> > user@debian:~$ PATH="$PATH:~/my_bin" list
> > Desktop Documents Downloads Music my_bin Pictures Public Templates Videos
> > ```
> > 
> > I believe but am not certain that this is related to the following patch:
> > https://www.mail-archive.com/dash@vger.kernel.org/msg01329.html
> 
> In your example, the tilde is quoted and ends up literally in PATH.
> Then, in bash only, tilde expansion is attempted again during the
> search. In my testing, zsh, mksh, ksh93, dash and FreeBSD sh do not
> implement this feature. Enabling POSIX mode in bash also disables the
> feature.
> 
> What works more portably is
>   PATH=~/my_bin:$PATH dash
> or
>   PATH=$PATH:~/my_bin list
> which expands the tilde at the time of the assignment. This works pretty
> much everywhere except in old real Bourne shells, which do not implement
> tilde expansion at all.
> 
> If you want to quote the $PATH part, it is possible but not necessary
> since it is in a variable assignment which is not subject to pathname
> generation and word splitting anyway. However, if "export" is prepended,
> I strongly recommend quoting it since some shells such as dash do not
> implement the special rule for assignment utilities yet.
> 
> --
> Jilles Tjoelker

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