Firstly, the Unix System Administration community has existed for a very long time. Occassionaly you should defer to the wisdom of others. That is to not put .:$PATH into the global profile. Beyond that it becomes unimportant as the user will do what they want when they execute ./a a few hundred times. A GUI that modifies a use base script sourced by .profile might help many people and it could warn the user of the dangers. http://briefcase.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Briefcase - Save your important files online for easy access!