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I found out what the real cause of my problems was! The ROS Fuerte release makes it possible for users not to mess with ROS_PACKAGE_PATH by supplying a "sandbox" directory in the fuerte workspace...i.e. - ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox At the URL http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Tutorials/CreatingPackage, section 1.2. Creating a New ROS Package, there is an instruction saying:
Now go into the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox directory: $ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox

It then says (and here is where the problem occurs): Alternatively, if you use Fuerte or later release, you can simply do: $ roscd

The "alternatively" part let me to believe I could also arrive at the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox by simply doing $ roscd, but this is not true. One must still explicitly perform $ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox to complete the tutorial. Otherwise doing $ roscreate-pkg beginner_tutorials std_msgs rospy roscpp will create the beginner_tutorials directory outside thee sandbox directory. If that is what one really wants to do sometime in the future, then the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable must be modified as stated above, but to complete the tutorials, modifying ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable is unnecessary.

Thank you for all your help! Greatly appreciated!

I found out what the real cause of my problems was! The ROS Fuerte release makes it possible for users not to mess with ROS_PACKAGE_PATH by supplying a "sandbox" directory in the fuerte workspace...i.e. - ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox At the URL http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Tutorials/CreatingPackage, section 1.2. Creating a New ROS Package, there is an instruction saying:
Now go into the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox directory: $ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox

It then says (and here is where the problem occurs): Alternatively, if you use Fuerte or later release, you can simply do: $ roscd

The "alternatively" part let led me to believe I could also arrive at the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox by simply doing $ roscd, but this is not true. One must still explicitly perform $ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox to complete the tutorial. Otherwise doing $ roscreate-pkg beginner_tutorials std_msgs rospy roscpp will create the beginner_tutorials directory outside thee sandbox directory. If that is what one really wants to do sometime in the future, then the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable must be modified as stated above, but to complete the tutorials, modifying ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable is unnecessary.

Thank you for all your help! Greatly appreciated!

I found out what the real cause of my problems was! The ROS Fuerte release makes it possible for users not to mess with ROS_PACKAGE_PATH by supplying a "sandbox" directory in the fuerte workspace...i.e. - ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox At the URL http://www.ros.org/wiki/ROS/Tutorials/CreatingPackage, section 1.2. Creating a New ROS Package, there is an instruction saying:
Now go into the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox directory: $ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox

It then says (and here is where the problem occurs): Alternatively, if you use Fuerte or later release, you can simply do: $ roscd

The "alternatively" part led me to believe I could also arrive at the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox by simply doing $ roscd, but this is not true. One must still explicitly perform $ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox to complete the tutorial. Otherwise doing $ roscreate-pkg beginner_tutorials std_msgs rospy roscpp will create the beginner_tutorials directory outside thee sandbox directory. If that is what one really wants to do sometime in the future, then the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable must be modified as stated above, but to complete the tutorials, modifying ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable is unnecessary.

Thank you for all your help! Greatly appreciated!