Re: Changing default setting of bash's hash table?
Roman Rakus wrote:
Maybe the subject is a bit misleading, I will clarify it.
Bash is using hash table to remember locations of executed commands.
Whenever you try to run a command bash looks in hash table. When the
command is found in table then bash will you full path name as it is in
the table.
However there is a problem when the command moved (or is deleted). Bash
by default is not checking if the command is really on the location. But
there is bash option that will force bash to check if the command really
exists. Man page says:
checkhash
If set, bash checks that a command found in the hash ta‐
ble exists before trying to execute it. If a hashed
command no longer exists, a normal path search is per‐
formed.
I have a question, if it is worth to enable this option by default? It
will not confuse some people, but can increase disk searching. Comments
welcome.
It will only help if the first match in the search path is removed, it will
still not do the right thing if a new match is prepended to the search path.
IMHO, this whole hashing should not be done in interactive shells at all.
The bottleneck is going to be the user running the commands anyway. I can
see how it speeds up scripts, but it's just confusing and useless in
interactive operation.
Kevin Kofler