Wed 07 April 2004
By markmc misc

$LD_LIBRARY_PATH Update

Of course, Ulrich did know. The
System V ABI specification's ELF section contains the requirement
that \$LD_LIBRARY_PATH have those semantics

   a string that holds a list of directories, separated by colons
   (:). For example, the string /home/dir/lib:/home/dir2/lib: tells the
   dynamic linker to search first the directory /home/dir/lib, then
   /home/dir2/lib, and then the current directory to find dependencies.

Moral of the story. Don't do

  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/some/other/dir

Do this instead

  if [ -n $LD_LIBRARY_PATH ]; then
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/some/other/dir
  else
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/some/other/dir
  fi

Or even

  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:}/some/other/dir

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