Published on: 2025-08-03 03:35:35
PATH isn't real on Linux On a fresh installation of Debian 12 (bookworm), executing echo $PATH shows the following output: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin /usr/bin contains /usr/bin/cat , and /usr/bin is in PATH , so just typing cat will run /usr/bin/cat . But what exactly is doing this lookup? By running strace cat , you can see the Linux system calls that are used: c execve ( "/usr/bin/cat" , [ "cat" ], 0x 7ffdfb2367a0 /* 63 vars */ ) = 0 The Linux kernel a
Keywords: argv bin int path usr
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