To "." or not to "."?

["anonymous" <vcharlie@mindspring.com>]

Hi,

1)  I am wondering why in the OpenBSD 3.2 default user .profile path
statement, the current directory (".") is:

 . . . :/usr/games:/usr/X11R6/bin.                         (with a "." at
the end, after "bin", with no space in between).

If the "." is just to add the current directory to the path statement,
shouldn't there be a colon (":") before the ".", like there is in front of
the other directories in the path statement?  Like this:

 . . . :/usr/games:/usr/X11R6/bin:.                         (with a "." at
the end, after ":bin", with no spaces in between).


2)  If the "." is removed, I guess this means that the shell can not run an
executable file that is in the current directory (when not in the path
statement) unless it is explicitly called, as in:

./<program_name>

I have been told that "." may be in the path statement just to include the
current directory to the path, and that  "Most people find that to be bad
form. It lets your shell, and any program run from it, run any executable
where it can get to its directory. I would suggest taking that out for
security's sake."  Is that correct?  If so, since OpenBSD is designed to be
"secure by default",  shouldn't the "." be absent from the path statement by
default?

?