Hi Andrew, On 8/7/07, Andrew Sackville-West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
$PATH is an environment variable like any other and gets assigned a > value in the same way as any other. export is used to make a variable > available to other processes that come after the one spawned by the > assignment process. Thus any process that is a child of the parent of > the export statement gets access to that variable. > so this is just three actions jammed together and its processed in a way > better expressed like this: > > <SNIP> > > This assignment will only exist in the shell in which it > executed. When you exit that shell, it will disappear along with that > shell. That's why you put somewhere where it will get started for > every shell... Thanks for explaining. So I understand that export PATH=~/scripts:$PATH concatenates "~/scripts" and "$PATH" and sets the result to be the new $PATH. This is kinda like on my old Amiga where I have a 'path' command, but where I must use the ADD option, otherwise the path would be replaced (like using export PATH=~/scripts): path ~/scripts add == export PATH=~/scripts:$PATH If I want an environment variable available all the time, I should place it in either /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile, right? Manon.
