Setting Path Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for setting up efficient PATH variables:

• If security is not a concern, put the current working directory (.) first in the path. However, including the current working directory in the path poses a security risk that you might want to avoid, especially for superuser.

• Keep the search path as short as possible. The shell searches each directory in the path. If a command is not found, long searches can slow down system performance.

• The search path is read from left to right, so you should put directories for commonly used commands at the beginning of the path.

• Make sure that directories are not duplicated in the path.

• Avoid searching large directories, if possible. Put large directories at the end of the path.

• Put local directories before NFS mounted directories to lessen the chance of “hanging” when the NFS server does not respond. This strategy also reduces unnecessary network traffic.