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  • But the OP has a script called foo in has private bin directory ($HOME/bin), which appears at the beginning of his $PATH, so which foo will report /home/bob/bin/foo — which is not what the question is asking for. Commented Apr 3, 2015 at 0:07
  • I think it is bad practice to hide stuff in scripts. It only gets you into trouble. Making the user stumble if a configuration file is not set is better practice Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 16:08
  • (1) “… hide stuff in scripts”?  What?  I wonder whether you understand the question.  (2) “configuration file”?  Where did that come from?  (3) “[S]cripts should be very simple if they are to be deployed.”  OK, that’s your opinion, which (3a) doesn’t really help answer this question, and (3b) is, I suspect, a minority opinion.  Albert Einstein is credited with saying “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”  A script (or any other piece of software) should be as complicated as it needs to be to satisfy its requirements.  … (Cont’d) Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 20:52
  • (Cont’d) …  And (I’m not sure whether this is 3c or 4) you say scripts should be very simple, but that a script that executes a mv command should be distributed with a configuration file that tells it whether mv is in /bin or /usr/bin?  Seriously? Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 20:53
  • I do not think he is doing 'just' an mv. He is doing some munging and then calls /user/bin/foo ... Since /user/bin/foo may be somewhere else he needs to find it. I see this as bad design (my opinion). Because foo is a dependency that must be implicitly found (unbeknownst to the user). Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 21:36