I recently updated my installation of vowpal wabbit by manually deleting the vowpal_wabbit directory and reinstalling according to the instructions at https://github.com/JohnLangford/vowpal_wabbit/wiki/Tutorial.
I needed access to the --link=logistic option, which my older installation didn't have. Currently the command:
~/vowpal_wabbit/vowpalwabbit/vw -d test_vw.vw -t -i lg.vw --link=logistic -p raw_predictions.txt
gives me what I want, whereas
vw -d test_vw.vw -t -i lg.vw --link=logistic -p raw_predictions.txt
hangs. It seems that only by explicitly declaring the path to the most current implementation of vw am I able to get the result I'm looking for.
This is probably more of a Unix/BASH question, but how do I update the short call to vw? I've had similar difficulties using vw-varinfo for what I suspect are similar reasons.