and this appears to work. What does the ".\" do and how can I find a way of executing the MaxIDE exe from the console in any folder. (I know Windows has the %PATH% encironment variable for this.)
So does Linux, but unlike windows the current folder is NOT in the path by default.
Anyway:
/ is the directory seperator
. is the current directory
so ./whatever means: run application 'whatever' in the current directory. Under DOS this is assumed to be desired by default, under linux you need to specify you want to run the version in your current directory
Related to this, you can also do the following:
../whatever
.. means the parent directory of your current one, so ../something will go UP one level and run a program in that folder.
../../../whatever will go up three levels,
/whatever (without the leading period) means run the program 'whatever' in the root folder of the filesystem.
/etc/whatever would run the program 'whatever' under the 'etc' subfolder of the root partition, etc...
~/whatever means go to the currently logged in user's home folder (~) and run program 'whatever' in that directory
also, since it sounds like you're not very familiar with linux filesystems yet: Keep in mind that under Linux/Unix/Mac, the file and directory names are CASE SENSITIVE.
This means that MaxIDE, MAXIDE and maxIDE are considered to be three distinct files, so if it is spelled MaxIDE, you can't launch it as ./maxide --- "file not found".
You can add the 'current folder' to your path so it will automatically 'find' files in it. Where to configure that depends on what shell you're running, the location varies.
If you're running bash:
look in /etc/.bashrc (affecting all users) or ~/.bashrc (affecting just you)
you would want to add the '.' folder to your path to include the current directory.
Oh, that's another thing: a trailing period in front of a file names means it's a hidden file. those won't show up when you do a regular listing with ls, you need to do ls -a to view the hidden files as well.
Anyway, while it can be convenient not having to specify the folder when running programs, it also makes things a less secure. For example, since all commands are seperate executables, it's possible for a piece of malware to put its own version of 'cd' or 'rm' in its own folder. Should someone manage to get something on your system through an exploit or something, you risk that you see something weird, enter its folder, thing 'hey, that shouldn't be there' -- type 'rm *' to try to erase, and unwittingly run the mystery 'rm' executable they had dropped in that folder as well, that could do who-knows-what to your system.
So... default folder not in your path may be a tad inconvenient at times (although you get used to this behaviour *very* quickly), it definitely helps in the damage control department.