Bash/sh/csh/tcsh - Updating PATH environment variable in session and on logon

When updating your PATH varible, it's usually because an installation requires programs and utilities within a directory, and the knowledge of the full path is not known. Either that, or you would like to refer to a command program within specifying the full path. You will usually receive the following error message if a program cannot be found...

xxx: Command not found

So lets check our current PATH using the following command...

Code Snippet

1. echo $PATH

End of Code Snippet

We can now view the current directories included in our PATH variable.
Example: /usr/sysmgr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/sysmg/bin:/etc:/usr/local/bin:.

For example, we may wish to install a program, and it requires the ar tool (A tool to aid archiving). It is unaware of the full system path, so we need to add the directory it resides in to our environment variable.

We can either do this temporarily or permanently... It also depends on which shell you are using.


Note: To find out which shell you are using, execute the following command.

Code Snippet

1. echo $SHELL

End of Code Snippet

Temporarily

tcsh/csh Shell (Seperate by spaces and use set command)
set path=(/usr/sysmgr/bin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/ucb /usr/sysmg/bin /etc /usr/local/bin .)

bath/sh Shell (Seperate by colon and use export command)
export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/dir1:/path/to/dir2


Permanently

Bash Shell (Edit /.bash_profile or /.bash_profile files)
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/change-bash-profile/

tcsh/csh Shell (Edit /.login or /.cshrc files)
http://osr507doc.sco.com/en/OSUserG/_The_C-shell_login_and_cshrc.html

In both cases, you are simply adding the command into a login/shell startup script to that the variable is always set with the extra paths. To edit these files, I recommend using vi (text editor).

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