On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 01:57:26PM +0100, Christoph Brinkhaus wrote: > I think you are right. The only remaining argument for specifying the > complete path I have read about is as below. > There might be the situation with different binaries but similar > names. For example /usr/bin/nc is different to /bin/nc. > But such a system should be a nightmare and I doubt if you can find > such an installation in the wild.
This reminds me of Solaris. As a successor to the BSD-ish SunOS, Solaris (which is a System V-ish operating system) wanted to retain some compatibility with its company's former product. So they installed parallel toolsets (commands including ps, echo, and so on) in two different directories. The SysV-ish command set, which is the preferred one going forward, is in /usr/bin. The BSD-ish command set, the legacy one, is in /usr/ucb. Users who want a BSD-ish experience (or scripts relying on that toolset) are encouraged to make sure /usr/ucb appears before /usr/bin in their PATH variables. Users who want the new SysV-ish experience should do the opposite, or not include /usr/ucb at all.
