Data location & readline

Hi, I’m pretty new at all this, however I got the mothur running! I’m using Ubuntu.
1st question:
Is it possible to have the input and output files saved somewhere else than the programm folder? If not, it gets too stuffed and files get mixed.
2nd question:
I think I still have problems with the Readline Libraries or something, because whenever I want to use the arrows of my keyboard, strange symbols show up instead of scrolling the commands I entered before or moving through the line I wrote.
Thanks a lot!

  1. You can set the input and output file locations using the set.dir command, http://www.mothur.org/wiki/Set.dir.
  2. Are you using the mothur executable with readline, or did you build your own version of mothur from source? If you build from source, be sure to set the USEREADLINE=yes in the makefile.