OK - here is a lot of info so hang on.

When I try to run any of the decompressed programs from the ant file, I am dragging them from the finder to the terminal window and then pressing "enter". This however accomplishes nothing. Sometimes I get the error message "permission denied," then I enter "sudo" and repeat the process. I then get the error "no command found."

I have gone through the install guide found here: http://paulr.dyndns.org/~paulr/ant/ant_install.html

He says to install it in the usr/local directory, but there isn't one on my computer. I don't know if it is because it's 10.4 or what. The first time through, I used terminal to create a local directory, but that didn't work. Then I went with the directory it seem as though the computer was looking for other programs in which was /usr/bin. I followed that installation all the way through and everything seemed to be going fine.

I used the vi program to set the .login and .profile file the way the instructions said. However, the -/ command didn't work and I found that if I just used the command "Vi .login" it worked. I don't know if that is an OS 10.4 change or not. Everything checked out find until I got down to the part about checking my path.

I really don't know what that means. The path check out that he had listed there did not work for me and I don't know where to go from there. When I entered "which ant" The answer was "no ant" so here I am lost.

As far as what you had typed earlier. I actually have no idea what Bourne Again Shell is. I am getting comfortable with the terminal command line. I keep hearing about bash and I think I use it but I don't really know what it is.

OK - how do I make sure that the path environment variable includes the directory for the command? I think I have ANT_HOME set. I set it per the website that I included in this post. However, I don't know how to check it. I also don't know how to find out which place it checks. Yes the opt directory was another choice according the installation instructions. However, I can't find that on my computer either. I am aware of all the hidden files, but I have been using terminal to access the directory structure and my understanding is that they aren't hidded in terminal.

Also, when I invoke ant, what is the executable file and should it work in any of the terminal shells or just bas or just csh etc... I have gone through all the files and drug them to the terminal window, none of them make anything other than errors happen.

Whew.... I think that's it for now. My email address is JaribHartman@hotmail.com. Please feel free to use it. Did I mention THANKYOU!