See UNIX Run. Run UNIX. Run.
At the moment, things are good. Physics makes sense at the moment, but I need to do some problems to confirm and exercise my knowldge. This has been the largest stress on me recently, and after meeting with my tutor last night, I feel like things are going to be alright. I’m not sure if it’s entirely warranted, but I feel better at the moment, and that’s what counts, I guess.
This weekend Dean leaves on his cruise. I’m going to go see him tonight, and then he’s gone for a week. Saturday, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Maybe the parents will go car shopping with me for a little while. I’ll probably just sit at home, but I’m actually okay with that for the first time in a long time.
Yesterday, while sitting in the lab, the person next to me looked over and ask me while a program that he had written would not execute. He had compiled it, and the executable was sitting there in a directory listing. He said that when he telnetted into Popeye, he just had to type the name of the program and it would run.
I explained to him that when he telnets into Popeye, he’s typing commands into that machine, and that machine’s configuration is the one that works. Just like how since he’s typing into a Linux box at the moment, the Linux box’s configuration is the one that works. I told him that on Popeye your current directory is in your PATH, which he seemed to understand. Then I explained that it was not so on the Linux boxes for security reasons and that they only do it on Popeye to make classes easier. I explained the significance of “.” and it’s shorthand to the current directory and that by typing “./program” the computer knows which copy of the program to run.
My explanation was, naturally, much more elegane and involved “hands on” experience, so I can’t completely recreated it. However, he seemed to understand, and that made me happy, because I made someone understand the UNIX-y goodness that was within. He finished briefly, and left. I didn’t get a chance to tell him that if presented with the same task in Windows, I would not be able to accomplish it either.