I actually saw this on another support forum and thought it was an interesting question. So I thought that I'd ask it here to see if anyone has any insight.
There are a number of applications which use environment variables to specify a set of subdirectories to search in order to find a file. Why isn't there a generalized way to do this? Example: When looking for a command, if the command's subdirectory is not specified, the shell will look for the command in the directories listed in the $PATH environment variable. It might be helpful to have this extended to a general case for fopen() and fdopen(). Can anybody think of a reason why this would be unwise? If the variable were unset, then it would only search the current working directory. If set, it would only search the specified directory, excluding the cwd unless a period were included somewhere within the set of directories in the variable. Just a weird question that sounded interestion. And, yes, I know how to implement it myself in my own code. John McKown Systems Engineer IV IT Administrative Services Group HealthMarkets(r) 9151 Boulevard 26 * N. Richland Hills * TX 76010 (817) 255-3225 phone * (817)-961-6183 cell john.mck...@healthmarkets.com * www.HealthMarkets.com Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message may contain confidential or proprietary information. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. HealthMarkets(r) is the brand name for products underwritten and issued by the insurance subsidiaries of HealthMarkets, Inc. -The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company(r), Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of TennesseeSM and The MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company.SM ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@vm.marist.edu with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
