All application execution in a Unix (Linux, Mac OS X, AIX, etc.) environment depends on the executable search path.
You can display this path in the terminal with this command:
echo $PATH
On Mac OS X (by default) this will display the following colon separated search path:
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
So any executable in the listed directories can by run just by typing in their name. For example:
cat mytextfile.txt
This runs /bin/cat and displays mytextfile.txt to the terminal.
To run any other command that is not in the executable search path requires that you qualify the path to the executable. So say I had an executable called MyProgram in my home directory on Mac OS X I can fully qualify it like so:
/Users/oliver/MyProgram
If you are in a location that is near the program you wished to execute you can qualify the name with a partial path. For example, if MyProgram was in the directory /Users/oliver/MyProject I and I was in my home directory I can qualify the executable name like this, and have it execute:
MyProject/MyProgram
Or say I was in the directory /Users/oliver/MyProject2 and I wanted to execute /Users/oliver/MyProject/MyProgram I can use a relative path like this, to execute it:
../MyProject/MyProgram
Similarly if I am in the same directory as MyProgram I need to use a "current directory" relative path. The current directory you are in is the period character followed by a slash. For example:
./MyProgram
To determine which directory you are currently in use the pwd command.
If you are commonly putting programs in a place on your hard disk that you wish to run without having to qualify their names. For example, if you have a "bin" directory in your home directory for regularly used shell scripts of other programs it may be wise to alter your executable search path.
This can be does easily by either creating or editing the existing .bash_profile file in your home directory and adding the lines:
#!/bin/sh
export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
Here the tilde (~) character is being used as a shortcut for /Users/oliver. Also note that the hash bang (#!) line needs to be the first line of the file (if it doesn't already exist). Note also that this technique requires that your login shell be bash (the default on Mac OS X and most Linux distributions). Also note that if you want your programs installed in ~/bin to be used in preference to system executables your should reorder the export statement as follows:
export PATH=~/bin:$PATH