Hello all,
This isn't a security question but I know some of you could help.

I just loaded RH 7.3 which comes with bash2. I had never tried bash2 as I usually use zsh, but was curious so I created a new user with bash2 as default shell and tried it.

Problem is: In bash2 if i do:

echo $PATH
it shows a different path than what is listed in my .bash_profile; markedly different, ergo I am exasperated when I have to do ./ for every program I run.

I did not set the PATH variable with command: PATH=/whatever but had only been using the .bash_profile to modify that users path.

I've compared my bash_profile in my bash2 user and my bash user and they are the same, --and it works for plain ole bash user.

I have consulted the man pages many times as well as the bash page at gnu.org but have found nothing.

I know this is minor but I can't get it to work and its irksome. I know I could just go back to using bash but I seem to be a masochist when it comes to things like this and I really want to know what's going on.

Any ideas anyone?