>User's are already confused by naming conflicts when "." doesn't come
>first in their $PATH.  Adding relative sub-directory searching to $PATH
>searches would, from what I've seen in my experience, cause major
>confusion.

actually........

relative subdirectory searching does work fine.  i even found a good
case for it once, when i was writing/testing/debugging a few similar
sets of tools.  just put the stuff you're playing with in ./bin and
put bin in your path and *presto* you can use a different set of tools
depending on where you are.

worked fine.  not for everyday consumption, of course, and certainly
confusing to people who don't understand it.

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