running a program

[Mark]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 10:10 AM, David Fletcher <dave at thefletchers.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-11-17 at 09:15 -0500, Ash Wyllie wrote:
>
>> >./ack
>
> As I understand it, if you want to run an executable, Linux will only
> run something in a directory listed in PATH unless you give it the
> absolute path to the executable. .. points up a directory but . means
> current directory, so ./ is the same as typing in the absolute path
> from / to the current directory. Am I correct?
>
Sort of - the shell will look at the command you give it.  If it is a
relative path name, it uses the PATH to find the executable.
"./<anything>" globs into `pwd`/<anything>, which is a fqpn.
Similarly, ../<filename> globs into `pwd`/../<filename>.

(Technically, I suppose that . globs to $CWD, but that and `pwd` are
essentially the same thing.)

But how does that relate here?  No one said to use .. anywhere....