Windchill shell error on Linux

After installing Windchill PDMLink 12.1.2.2 on a RHEL 8.7 system (and same issue on RHEL 7.9 also), launching a Windchill shell results in the following error message:

readlink: missing operand
Try 'readlink --help' for more information.
dirname: missing operand
Try 'dirname --help' for more information.
dirname: missing operand
Try 'dirname --help' for more information.

In the Windchill shell environment, most commands seem to work, such as Windchill version gives expected results. It seems that the Classpath is not set effectively and thus commands to compile Java code will fail. For example, the following command fails:

javac -classpath ${CLASSPATH}:${WT_HOME}/srclib/tool/Annotations.jar -d ${WT_HOME}/codebase AfterEDRloader.java

But substituting the variable will yield successful compilation:

javac -classpath /opt/ptc/windchill/windchill/codebase:/opt/ptc/windchill/windchill/codebase/WEB-INF/lib/*:/opt/ptc/windchill/windchill/lib/*:/opt/ptc/windchill/windchill/tomcat/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/ptc/windchill/windchill/tomcat/bin/tomcat-juli.jar:/opt/ptc/windchill/windchill/wex/codebase:${WT_HOME}/srclib/tool/Annotations.jar -d ${WT_HOME}/codebase AfterEDRloader.java

Has anyone seen this behavior? What are possible consequences of this? How to resolve this and launch a Windchill shell cleanly?