How to run an executable without prepending ./

Question

I'm fairly new to Ubuntu and I do believe in jumping in head first into issues to learn. I know that I can run some GUI applications with Putty+Xming on headless Ubuntu Server. But I can't run Visual Studio Code My issue is not installing Visual Studio Code. I've installed through zip and through umake. Both with the same result.

user@server:~/tools/web/visual-studio-code$ ls
Code                       libgcrypt.so.11  natives_blob.bin
content_shell.pak          libnode.so       resources   
Credits_43.0.2357.65.html  libnotify.so.4   snapshot_blob.bin
icudtl.dat                 license.txt      ThirdPartyNotices.txt
libffmpegsumo.so           locales

user@server:~/tools/web/visual-studio-code$ Code
No command 'Code' found, did you mean:
Command 'ode' from package 'plotutils' (universe)
Command 'node' from package 'node' (universe)
Command 'node' from package 'nodejs-legacy' (universe)
Code: command not found
user@server:~/tools/web/visual-studio-code$

Anyone know if VS-Code can be opened this way?

Solution

You have to run an execitable from current directory as ./executable where . represent the current directory.

If you are in ~/tools/web/visual-studio-code directory to run the executable Code you have to do two things,

1. Check if the executable has execution permission. See How to make a file executable?
2. Run the executable as, ./Code Why do I need to type `./` before executing a program in the current directory?

How to run an executable from current directory without ./ before executiable:

Run the following command in a terminal,

echo "export PATH=$PATH:." >> ~/.bashrc

and run Code from ~/tools/web/visual-studio-code as

user@server:~/tools/web/visual-studio-code$ Code 

How to run an executable from any directory without ./ before executiable:

echo "export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/tools/web/visual-studio-code" >> ~/.bashrc

and run Code from anywhere,

user@server:~$ Code

Comments

[Alec Teal]

Put it in your $PATH

[Lightness Races in Orbit]

Note that putting . on the PATH is a pretty terrible idea and you should generally just live with writing ./Code like everybody else.