./, not /. (Was: Re: [techtalk] upgrading to Netscape 4.7)

[Laurel Fan]

Once I had . in my path, but I took it out. I like not having . in my
path and having to type ./blah. Why?

1) The trojan thing.  On any big multiuser system, users will try to do
things to other users.  Plus I like looking in other peoples dirs :)

2) When I'm coding, I can always do:

!./

To repeat the last run of my program.

!gd

To repeat the last debug.

!m
or 
!gc

To repeat the last compile (depending on whether i'm using make or just
calling gcc)

Regardless of what the program is called.

3) . and / are right next to each other on almost all keyboards.  Convenient.
(Interestingly, lots of other important stuff is also near each other,
such as ^XS, ^XC, ^XF, ^Z, ^C, ^S, ;<enter>...)

4) Most of the time, I don't run stuff in the cwd.  If I do, it's
usually either because I just wrote it or was browsing directories to
look for it, so its already separated in my mind from the stuf fin my
path.

5) Once I accidentally typed '*' at the command line.  a.out happened to
be the first file in the directory.  a.out also happened to do
interesting things when presented with a list of files as arguments.  If
I hadn't had . in my path, it wouldnt have happened (Ok, if I actually
looked at what I typed before I pressed enter, it wouldnt have either. 
but thats another issue.).


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