Thanks for the thorough explanation. It helped me to grasp how the whole Path
thing works.
Since I would like to add /sw/bin to my /etc/profile I opened it, but only
discovered:
___________________________________________________________
# System-wide .profile for sh(1)
if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
fi
if [ "${BASH-no}" != "no" ]; then
[ -r /etc/bashrc ] && . /etc/bashrc
fi
___________________________________________________________
This is not what I expected, and can't think of where I should add /sw/bin/
to my path.
I appreciate your patience.
Bill
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Kyle Wheeler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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> On Monday, January 28 at 02:49 AM, quoth [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> > Your suggestion below pointed out that .bash_profile is the
> > initialization file. But .bash_profile has no references to Path
> > in it. I can add PATH=$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 couldnât
> hear the barbarians coming.
> -- Garrison Keillor
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