Question regarding the PATH environment variable

[thenk24]

I know if I put a (dot) before the PATH environment variable, it will be a really bad thing because if I have a script with called ls that does something malicious in a directory and I run it as root it can be very bad.

But I have also heard that putting a (dot) after the PATH can also be just as bad. What is the reason for this and do you have an example?

[hazel]

I would never put a dot anywhere in my path because the dot represents the current directory. In Linux, you're encouraged to browse around your system examining things - you're not corralled in My Documents as you are in Windows - so the current directory at the time you enter a command could be just about any directory in the filesystem. You don't want such an indeterminate term in your command path.