Re: Newbie Questions

[Gary Johnson <garyjohn@spocom.com>]

On 2014-02-04, mrushton wrote:
> I am loving Cygwin.  
> 
> I have been reading the manuals and documentation and have some
> newbie questions. 

These are all general Unix/Linux questions, not specific to Cygwin,
and are therefor not appropriate for discussion on the cygwin list.

That said, I don't like dusting people off, so...

> 1)  When I go to execute a script, do I just type the name of it
>     or do i have to do a ./NameOfScript ? 

If the command is not specified by a path name, and if the shell
doesn't find a built-in command, alias or function that matches the
command name, it searches PATH for a file of that name.  PATH does
not normally contain "." and should not, for security reasons.
Therefore, if you wish the execute a script in the current
directory, and the current directory is not in your PATH, you have
to specify the path to the script.

> 2)  I am trying to do an Alias of the Clear Command ... in my
>     bashrc I has an alias for clear to do a printf "\033c".   Well
>     it does not seem to work from my scripts, but works from shell
>     prompt.
>
>     Is this a path issue ?  

No.  Aliases are not exported and hence do not appear in the
environment of commands.

> 3)  I am still trying to figure out how to open a termial window
>     and have a menu script always run. 
>
>     Should I put this in my .profile or is there a better way to
>     do this ?  

I'm not sure you should do this at all, but if you want to try such
a thing for a while, put it in your ~/.bashrc and execute it only if
~/.bashrc is sourced from an interactive shell.  Some people
determine this by checking if $PS1 is set while others check for the
presence of "i" in $-.

All of these questions are answered in the man page for bash, or
whatever shell you are using.  If you don't want to read the whole
thing, just search for keywords from your questions.  If you have
further questions, you will have to find a different forum/list in
which to ask them.

Regards,
Gary


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