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From: Kaz Kylheku <643-408-1753@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: Default PATH setting - reduce to something more sensible?
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 17:59:05 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2025-01-14, Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
> Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@talktalk.net> writes:
>>As far as I could determine, some sort of path searching has existed
>>since the 6th edition of UNIX (., /bin and /usr/bin hardcoded in the
>>shell) and in its present form, it has existed since the 7th edition of
>>UNIX. Which means PATH searching was used on PDP-11 16-bit minicomputers
>>in the 1970s. It didn't cause performance problems back
>>then and will thus certainly don't cause any today.
>
> There are cases where it _does_ cause performance degradation, if one or
> more of the PATH elements refer to NFS filesystems, for example.

If it doesn't hurt, that "hash -r" stuff in Bash and probably other
shells has to be just developer gold plating. :)

I suspect that machines becoming faster *and* process creation becoming
more complex and heavier (e.g. attaching multiple shared libraries and
resolving symbols) has allowed us to get away with longer PATHs without
noticing.

-- 
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