Re: whence output varies with dot vs. realpath in $PATH

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 2022-10-31 14:18, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 7:57 AM Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca> wrote:
>> It's the -m option.  If you ask for a pattern match, "whence" rebuilds
>> the internal command hash table from the path and then does the
>> matching against that.  However, "." is never used when loading the
>> hash table because it would become invalid as soon as you change
>> directories.  If $PWD is actually in the path, then those commands DO
>> get put in the hash table, so whence reports them.

That can be in there literally?  I'll try that.  But wouldn't the same 
reasoning apply as with dot?  Anyway I get the point, you can't rehash 
at every directory change.


>    This should
> probably be clarified in the documentation -- whence never does
> globbing on actual file names.
>
> You don't see this as a persistent condition because you're running
> "whence" in a subshell with $(...).
>
> The "zsh is zsh" output means you have an empty path element, e.g. two
> consecutive colons in $PATH or $PATH begins or ends with colon, and an
> executable or link named "zsh" in the current directory.
>

> 2 /aWorking/Zsh/Source/Wk 1 $ echo $PATH
> /aWorking/Zsh/Source/Wk:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:
>
Thereyago, I'll kill that trailing colon.  Still, it seems like 
something that should be ignored.