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On Monday, January 28 at 02:49 AM, quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> Your suggestion below pointed out that .bash_profile is the
> initialization file. But .bash_profile has no references to Path
> in it. I can add PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin as you suggested, but will
> adding this override my original Path variable, or simply add it to
> the existing path?
It adds it to the existing path.
Your Path is stored as a colon-separated list of folders containing
programs (e.g. "/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin"). The string "$PATH" is
a reference to the existing path---if you say "echo $PATH" your shell
will print out your current PATH, because that's the string referred
to be the notation "$PATH". When you tell your shell to set a variable
name to be something, it performs a similar kind of expansion. For
example, if you say FOO=$PATH, the variable FOO will now contain a
copy of the contents of the variable $PATH. You can append things to
variable expansions, because the shell operates almost entirely in
terms of lines of text. For example, if you say "FOO=word", then the
command "echo $FOO" will print out "word". If you then say
BAR=$FOO-plunkity, the BAR variable will consist of "word-plunkity". A
similar think would happen had you instead said FOO=$FOO-plunkity,
which is that FOO would then be a reference to the text
"word-plunkity". Do you see how that works?
Thus, the command suggested, "PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin", will set the PATH
to be a string consisting of whatever $PATH is (i.e. your current
path), a colon, and the string /sw/bin. It will not throw away your
existing path.
> If it is possible I would rather add /sw/bin to the resource file
> where the rest of my Path is stored. How would I go about doing
> this?
That would be /etc/profile
~Kyle
- --
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman
Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn’t
hear the barbarians coming.
-- Garrison Keillor
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