I'm really surprised over the complete lack of thought shown by people who spend time writing about this. The problem isn't really about having . in your path,

I'm really surprised over the complete lack of thought shown by people who spend time writing about this. The problem isn't really about having . in your path, but the old mistake of having it AS THE FIRST THING in your path, before your shell has a chance to reach its usual important locations (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin and so forth). Put it as the last thing in your path variable and you won't be having any problems worth mentioning (hey, even the OpenBSD guys finally went with this solution after having banished . entirely for years).