Tech-Recipes - Latest Comments in OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Sdlfkjsdlfksjdf — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 19:46:27 -0000

I did all that's posted here and PATH is unchanged.
Mac must be more fail than I initially thought.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Andreas Hagemann — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:45:39 -0000

How do I create a .profile file.

//PC-user for 20 years...

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Rara — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 23:23:52 -0000

close terminal and reopen and the changes should be saved.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Tired Of Knowitalls — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:09:08 -0000

This is not wrong.

The same path variable is not always desired for all users. And... not everyone uses pico.

Only use /etc/paths:
1) If you are SURE of what you are doing
2) You read what you edited/typed at least twice
3) and if ALL users on that machine need the same stuff in their path variable.

So there.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

fx-mike — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:32:42 -0000

If you do not have a .profile file, then just create one (in your home directory of course)

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Mitur Binesderti — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:09:36 -0000

Sorry but this is completely wrong and there is no .profile file. This must be REALLY old or something.

To ACTUALLY change your path type: sudo pico /etc/paths

You can then edit your path variable and it will be remembered and usable by all users.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Frederik — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:22:57 -0000

I found the path files at /etc/paths Hope this works for you.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Frederik — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:20:15 -0000

I found that you have to use capital letters, try echo $PATH

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

James — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:45:52 -0000

when I try to echo $path i get a blank line in Terminal. I want to setup Ruby on Rails in my usr/local/bin folder but can't seem to get confirmation that I have changed the PATH variable.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Chris — Thu, 13 May 2010 10:13:44 -0000

i'd love to see a reply to Davids Question :)
He asked ...
"I can't seem to find in my path files. Not in ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or anywhere else I've looked...where do those variables reside."

i.e when you make a change in sudo bash login ... WHAT exactly are you changing ... deff not any of those files in root user dir for sure ...

Any one know the answer ... i don't think so because everyone avoids this question ...

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

nicholaswhitworth — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:42:02 -0000

I used this to get quick access to mysql. instead of typing /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql ... if you ADD
PATH=$PATH:"/usr/local/mysql/bin/"
export PATH
to the gumph already there... you only have to type 'mysql' into the terminal to run it - because it adds PATH to the other list of domains that it searches when it asks itself "what could he possibly mean by 'mysql' ?" Cheers. I added this because i wasn't clear that you could state PATH more than once without overwriting it (which you can - it seems...)

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Clark — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:37:29 -0000

Doesn't work on OS X 10.5.8

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Guest — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:21:09 -0000

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Timothy T. — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:07:41 -0000

When I start a new terminal, and echo $PATH it does not contain the change. But when I type vi ~/.profile I see it.

What could be going on?

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Jason Woan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:57:23 -0000

Many thanks! I've been wondering how to do this for some time now.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Cavin Graves — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:55:11 -0000

For some reason this is what my path is:

[code]
##
# DELUXE-USR-LOCAL-BIN-INSERT
# (do not remove this comment)
##
echo $PATH | grep -q -s "/usr/local/bin"
if [PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
export PATH
fi
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad
# Setting PATH for Python 3.1
# The orginal version is saved in .profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.1/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH
[/code]

This is even though I have Fink installed. I'm sorry to post this so randomly here but I don't know where else to put it.
When I use Fink, it works.... So I don't really know why my profile has this in it. this is in ~/.profile just so you're sure.

If you want to see what echo $PATH does this is it:

[code]
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.1/bin:/sw/bin:/sw/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/opt/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin
[/code]
So it's not as if I have a problem as of right now. But for some reason, as far as I can see I don't know where to edit my path. I'm sure I'll want to eventually.
Thanks.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Amgine — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:54:26 -0000

In my case, I need to add a directory to the path for both myself and for www-data. Is there a variation for adding the dir in /etc/profile?

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Mitch — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:53:59 -0000

Thanks mate,
Just what I was looking for. It seemed to be a different way of doing things in Leopard than previous versions.
Cheers,
Mitch

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

marcel — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 07:21:21 -0000

normal i would add an exra PATH in /etc/profile

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

Thomas Beek — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:24:40 -0000

david: it's ok to have the same elements of a path variable in your path more than once; in some cases it is necessary. As far as how to give one path priority over another, just make the one you want to load come first (reading left to right) in your PATH variable.

Re: OS X: Change your PATH environment variable

david — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:44:00 -0000

I have a question: When I "echo $PATH" or type "env" which shows the same path I assume, I'm given a path that has a bunch of variables, namely /usr/bin/:/usr/bin/sbin, etc etc that I can't seem to find in my path files. Not in ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or anywhere else I've looked...where do those variables reside. I really just want to switch the order of /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin so my /usr/local/bin python2.6 install default starts instead of the version 2.5 that ships with Mac.

Hope that's not too confusing, I don't think it is.

Thanks for the otherwise helpful information...after adding a ~/.profile I noticed that the PATH in there precedes the other PATH attributes mentioned above so temporarily I've tacked /usr/local/bin on there and it works how I want...but now I have /usr/local/bin on the PATH twice and would like to remedy that.

Cheers