[user@server somedir]$ cd /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/

...when you could type...

[user@server somedir]$ /etc/rc.d/rc0.d/

It always surprised me that no one implemented this in bash, and finally I got around to doing it myself. It's a very simply change to only one file.

See below for a patch against 2.05b as well as a binary I compiled on a fairly old system (so that you won't have clib problems).

If you want to use my binary, just copy it somewhere on your system. Then run it. If it launches ok, you should be good to go.

Note: this new feature does not work in scripts as I enable it only in interactive mode. This is because it is possible that a really lame script would do something like enter the directory by itself and then look for an error code as a way to detect whether a directory is present or not.

And so although it should be safe it's probably safest to leave /bin/bash in place, install it as /bin/bash_patched, and then change it to be your default shell in /etc/passwd.

• here's the bash binary (MD5: 2cfebcf0725e66f01f207596d1cc3f95)
• here's the patch against 2.05b
• here's the patch against 3.0.16
• here's the execute_cmd.c revised source file that has been patched

(to make a patch, do diff -Naur  old_file new_file > patch_file

-- MattWalsh - 09 Mar 2004