It is also the program executed when you use the run command. If you do not specify a directory and the file is not found in the working directory, uses the environment variable PATH as a list of directories to search, just as the shell does when looking for a program to run. You can change the value of this variable, for both and your program, using the path command. Omitting filename means to discard information on the executable file. Read symbol table information from file filename .
PATH is searched when necessary.
Use the file command to get both symbol table and program to run from the same file. This is because they may contain pointers to the internal data recording symbols and data types, which are part of the old symbol table data being discarded inside . On some kinds of object files, the symbol-file command does not normally read the symbol table in full right away. Instead, it scans the symbol table quickly to find which source files and which symbols are present. The details are read later, one source file at a time, as they are needed.