unix env command can't find file even though its in the current directory

Question

I'm having a problem with calling env from the terminal. I'm running the latest Ubuntu OS. Here's what happens:

$ ls
disarm.ss  hereis.ss  mat.ss  README  sg.ss  start-test  syntax.ss
$ env SCHEMEHEAPDIRS=/usr/lib/csv8.1/i3le sg.ss
env: sg.ss: No such file or directory

I have checked that the path /usr/lib/csv8.1/i3le is correct. Here are the permissions of the files in this dir:

$ ls -l
total 60
-rw------- 1 dtdannen dtdannen 17375 2011-03-29 23:05 disarm.ss
-rw------- 1 dtdannen dtdannen  9410 2011-03-29 23:05 hereis.ss
-rw------- 1 dtdannen dtdannen  9955 2011-03-29 23:05 mat.ss
-rw------- 1 dtdannen dtdannen   394 2011-03-29 23:05 README
-rwxrwxrwx 1 dtdannen dtdannen  2801 2011-03-29 23:05 sg.ss
-rwx------ 1 dtdannen dtdannen   137 2011-03-29 23:05 start-test
-rw------- 1 dtdannen dtdannen   678 2011-03-29 23:05 syntax.ss

I can't seem to figure out why env cannot find 'sg.ss'. Is it a problem with permissions? I know you should rarely if ever 'chmod 777' on a file (here I did so on sg.ss), but I just wanted to see if that would make it work. I need to call this command within a python program, not directly via command line, but I get the same error in both cases, so I used the terminal as my example.

Any and all advice is appreciated :)

P.S. I searched SO for at least 20 minutes and couldn't find a similar post. Hope I'm not re-asking something.

EDIT: Tried the same thing but with ./sg.ss instead of just sg.ss (still didn't work, same error :( )

Answer 1

Look at the first line in the file sg.ss it most likely starts #!/blah check that /blah exists.

Answer 2

env will search the PATH environment variable to search for your utility, just as your shell's native behavior. Use ./ if you want to refer to the file in current directory, i.e.:

env SCHEMEHEAPDIRS=/usr/lib/csv8.1/i3le ./sg.ss

Answer 3

The current directory isn't on the search path, and as sg.ss doesn't contain any slashes, it's taken to be a name to look for in the path (much like the behavior of execl. You want env SCHEMEHEAPDIRS=/usr/lib/csv8.1/i3le ./sg.ss.