zlacker

>>taubek+(OP)
I once sent out a proposal on the FreeBSD lists to merge /sbin with /bin, and /usr/sbin with /usr/bin. People were concerned that this would slow down the system, due to PATH lookups taking longer. Even when I demonstrated the opposite was true (it being faster due to fewer directories needing to be scanned), I wasn't able to get consensus. What a shame.

>>EdScho+Oa
What ancient system makes a speed difference in command lookup in PATH?

>>mekste+fv
Calls like execvp() do little more than splitting PATH on ':', followed by repeatedly invoking execve() on ${dir}/${filename}. The fewer elements you have in PATH, the fewer execve() calls need to be performed in the worst case.

>>EdScho+tz
Sounds like they need fixed for inefficient handling of simple operation.

>>mekste+nA
The fix is for the user to use a smaller $PATH when possible. Any method of checking that the command exists and is executable before trying to execute it leads to TOCTOU race conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-of-check_to_time-of-use