On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Lucio de Re wrote:

> I've always been wary of the fact that there seems to be no real
> convention as to which of /bin and /usr/bin should occur first in the
> path, this at least eliminates one such indecision :-)

The short answer is that it doesn't matter.  If the set of binaries that is
in /bin is disjoint from that in /usr/bin, there's no conflict.  What you
propose actually creates the potential for all sorts of confusion (`was that
ps from /bin or /usr/bin?').

> One small gain (at the expense of a small disk capacity loss) is the
> saving in memory and loading time this would provide.  But having a
> simpler $PATH does appeal to me.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, precisely, but I will note that it's
been demonstrated that shared libraries can significantly increase load
time.  Also, the nature of the utilities in /bin is such that any possible
savings in VM space is not very significant.

I don't believe creating shared copies of the utilities in /bin and /sbin is
a good idea.

--scott