PATH variable of .profile

[Guest_imported]

why is it that the current directory (".&quot in the .profile for normal users part of the search path in the PATH variable? how come the .profile of the root directory does not include the current directory?

 

[Guest_imported]

user profile is set up in the following way:

first comes /etc/environment which contains rows in format
PATH=/wherever:/right/there

next is /etc/profile which is shell script
PATH=$PATH:/somewhere/else
export PATH

then comes users .profile, which is copied from /etc/security/profile at user creation, this is the place where you can remove . or replace it with ~