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by mathfailure 137 days ago
One rarely actually needs to shadow binaries. Some cases could indeed be covered by introducing an alias that binds the binary's name to call a different copy of that binary.

You use shadowing to fix issues where you install some software that expects you to have a sane and ~recent version of some tool like git, but you don't as your system provides that binary and unfortunately it is either not sane (not GENERALLY sane [while it could be sane for system scripts]) or not recent enough. In that case the program's function would simply fail if it would call the system's binary and you shadow the binary with your version to fix that.

> adding your script directory in front of the PATH

That's a poor advice for the scripts you call relatively frequently. Instead, (as a general approach, we aren't discussing some particular script) don't use shadowing for scripts: just pick a non-conflicting script name and append the script's dir to $PATH.
1 comments
Joker_vD 137 days ago
> That's a poor advice for the scripts you call relatively frequently.

Why? It protects you from someone else (cough updated packages introducing new commands cough) picking a name you already use.

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mathfailure 137 days ago
Because it's useless extra typing. People try to narrow commands down to two fucking chars and you suggest to type the whole goddamn path!
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Dylan16807 137 days ago
Nobody suggested typing whole paths.
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mathfailure 136 days ago
They did. Just not explicitly.
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Dylan16807 136 days ago
The only situation where you'd need to type a full path is when you have a name collision. But the suggestion to not worry about collisions with unknown system binaries also said to put the script folder first. In that situation running the script doesn't need a full path, and you won't be running the unknown system binary. So you won't be typing full paths.

Please explain the non-explicit suggestion you see, because I don't see it.

It's clear that "adding your script directory in front of the PATH" means a one time edit to .bashrc or equivalent, right? In normal use you're not typing it.

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Joker_vD 136 days ago
I've asked you why prepending paths to PATH instead of appending was a bad idea. How is having typing full paths has anything to do with it?
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