I wrote:
>Again if assigning to .CURDIR reset the 'dot' path in .PATH, my
>problem would probably also go away (my sys.mk sets .CURDIR to a

Almost.  Actually 'dot' isn't the culprit, its 'cur' which gets set
when Dir_Init() is called.  The following gives me correct behaviour,
mainly because it allows me to avoid .DOTLAST - since cur gets reset
to the desired (relative) path.

As the comment in parse.c says - anyone silly/brave enough (eg. me)
to frob .CURDIR had better know what they are doing to get sensible
results. 

I've always wanted to be able to get make -V .PATH to do something
useful.  Now it does.  From this we can see that 'cur' is always the
first entry in .PATH (followed by '.'), so the XXX comment in
DirLookupSubdir asking if 'dot' should be looked up rather than 'cur'
when .DOTLAST is not set, is correct - the initial call using 'cur'
was pointless anyway.

--sjg

--- dir.c.~1~	Mon Sep 16 16:16:14 2002
+++ dir.c	Thu Nov 14 11:48:35 2002
@@ -237,6 +237,7 @@ Dir_Init (const char *cdname)
     openDirectories = Lst_Init (FALSE);
     Hash_InitTable(&mtimes, 0);
 
+    Var_Delete(".PATH", VAR_GLOBAL);
     if (cdname != NULL) {
 	/*
 	 * Our build directory is not the same as our source directory.
@@ -1070,9 +1090,7 @@ Dir_FindFile(char *name, Lst path)
 	    printf("failed. Trying subdirectories...");
 	}
 
-	/* XXX - should we look in `dot' subdirs here? */
-
-	if (!hasLastDot && cur && (file = DirLookupSubdir(cur, name)) != NULL)
+	if (!hasLastDot && dot && (file = DirLookupSubdir(dot, name)) != NULL)
 	    return file;
 
 	(void) Lst_Open (path);
@@ -1305,7 +1323,7 @@ Dir_MTime(GNode *gn)
 Path *
 Dir_AddDir(Lst path, const char *name)
 {
-    LstNode       ln;	      /* node in case Path structure is found */
+    LstNode       ln = NILLNODE; /* node in case Path structure is found */
     Path	  *p = NULL;  /* pointer to new Path structure */
     DIR     	  *d;	      /* for reading directory */
     struct dirent *dp;	      /* entry in directory */
@@ -1320,7 +1338,8 @@ Dir_AddDir(Lst path, const char *name)
 	}
     }
 
-    ln = Lst_Find (openDirectories, (ClientData)name, DirFindName);
+    if (path)
+	ln = Lst_Find (openDirectories, (ClientData)name, DirFindName);
     if (ln != NILLNODE) {
 	p = (Path *)Lst_Datum (ln);
 	if (Lst_Member(path, (ClientData)p) == NILLNODE) {
@@ -1339,6 +1358,7 @@ Dir_AddDir(Lst path, const char *name)
 	    p->hits = 0;
 	    p->refCount = 1;
 	    Hash_InitTable (&p->files, -1);
+	    Var_Append(".PATH", p->name, VAR_GLOBAL);
 
 	    /*
 	     * Skip the first two entries -- these will *always* be . and ..
--- parse.c.~1~	Mon Sep 16 16:16:15 2002
+++ parse.c	Thu Nov 14 11:48:06 2002
@@ -1158,6 +1158,7 @@ ParseDoDependency(char *line)
 		break;
 	    case ExPath:
 		Lst_ForEach(paths, ParseClearPath, (ClientData)NULL);
+		Var_Delete(".PATH", VAR_GLOBAL);
 		break;
 #ifdef POSIX
             case Posix:
@@ -1598,6 +1599,16 @@ Parse_DoVar(char *line, GNode *ctxt)
     }
     if (strcmp(line, MAKEOVERRIDES) == 0)
 	Main_ExportMAKEFLAGS(FALSE);	/* re-export MAKEFLAGS */
+    else if (strcmp(line, ".CURDIR") == 0) {
+	/*
+	 * Somone is trying to be way too clever.
+	 * Let's just pretend they know what they are doing...
+	 * and re-initialize dirSearchPath
+	 */
+	Dir_End();
+	Dir_Init(cp);
+	Dir_InitDot();
+    }
 }