On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 16:11:22 +0100, Peter Percival
 declaimed the following:

>
>I am new to all this!  What are they?  Is there an appropriate directory
>in which I can put my executables, and whose name I may safely add to PATH?
>

 Primarily -- any malevolent program could do things like create scripts
with the same name as system software, and if you attempt to invoke the
system utility in a compromised directory, it will run the script. {As a
somewhat silly example, say a symlink was created to have "vim" ->
"/bin/rm" and you didn't know... Typing "vim mysource.c" would result in
deleting your source file rather than editing it).

 During development, just get into the habit of deliberately specifying
"./" while in the directory with the program. Beyond that, you may want to
study the Linux "standard" file system layout (I'm not up on the preferred
usages, but things like /opt, /usr/local/bin might be candidates... Or
create a single user "mkdir ~/bin" and put that on the PATH).


--
 Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
 wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

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