Richard,

<<If I follow, does that mean that @prefix@ is a configure.in variable
for the build? I do not have enough knowledge to have figured this
out on my own and it didn't fit what I knew about C or BASIC.
I did do the long path thing and it worked and then did the alias thing.
I did not understand a lot of this so I was wondering.>>

Within the configure.in file there is a prefix variable which by
default is set to /usr/firebird, but can be changesd to pretty
much what you want /opt/firebird for normal builds for example.
This is used to set the rpath for libarary lookups plus a few other things,
such as the @prefix@ in aliases.conf. The variable is picked up and used in the
build process for Firebird.

The MacOSX build does not use this prefix at all, because it creates
what is called a "Framework" which is the normal mechanism for a
piece of software to install and run on Mac. The long path you saw
for the example database is also normal, as it is effectively a help
resource within the framework...

Regards
Paul Beach
Tel (France): +33 (0) 2 47 58 30 43
Mob (France): +33 (0) 6 79 24 32 32