How can I add a path to the PATH environment variable?

Question

I want to add a path to the PATH environment variable?

I have tried with export PATH=/mypath:$PATH and it works. But the next time I start the Terminal, my new path is not int the PATH environment variable any more.

How can I add a path to the PATHenvironment variable? and it should be there also the next time I start the Terminal.

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I have problems with this now again, the trick that worked before doesn't seem to work anymore.

I have tried with:

echo 'export GRADLE_HOME=/Users/jonas/gradle-1.2/' >> ~/.profile
echo 'export PATH=GRADLE_HOME/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile

to add two environment variables. Then my ~/.profile-file has this content:

export GRADLE_HOME=/Users/jonas/gradle-1.2/
export PATH=GRADLE_HOME/bin:$PATH

But when I start a new Terminal window and type gradle (the command I added to PATH), I get a message that the command doesn't exists. If I run the command from /Users/jonas/gradle-1.2/bin it works fine!

Answer 1

echo 'export PATH=/my/path:$PATH' >> ~/.bash_profile should do the trick!

If you used echo 'export PATH=/my/path:$PATH' > ~/.bash_profile, or any such variation, you would be overwriting the contents of your profile!

Answer 2

OSX reads the following files in order when a terminal opens :

/etc/profile
~/.bash_profile
~/.bash_login   
~/.profile     

So place your path addition into one of these. I normally put additions into ~/.bash_profile

Answer 3

Updated at 2021.0908

I'm using this:

~/.zsh/
├── .fzf.zsh
├── .zcompdump
├── .zprofile              # This will be read before .zshrc.
├── .zsh_functions         # This is for my custom scripts.
├── .zsh_history
├── .zshenv                # (Important) Create a symlink of this to your ~/.
└── .zshrc                 # Put everything in this file is fine. (cont.)
                           # (cont.) this is the ".bashrc" in your head.

Some points:

• My .zprofile is empty. I prefer to put all stuff inside .zshrc because it doesn't contain too many lines.
• The content of .zshenv SHOULD contains this line so that we can organize the .zsh family into the ~/.zsh folder, AND don't forget to symlink it into your ~ folder where your OS can read:

ZDOTDIR=/.zsh

DONE. You can ignore my old answer follows.

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Old answer: (Not correct. Put everything inside .zshrc is just fine.)

Old question but, for MacOS X Catalina users:

Create/edit ~/.zshenv:

# comment for yourself
PATH="$PATH:to/your/path"

Notice that modify PATH in ~/.zprofile or ~/.zshrc is not correct, it should be ~/.zshenv.

If you need to prepend something to PATH, further create/edit ~/.zprofile:

# apply the prepend to PATH
[[ -r ~/.zshenv ]] && source ~/.zshenv
# remove duplicate in PATH
typeset -U PATH

Reference: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Intro/intro_3.html

Answer 4

In addition to the places mentioned by  @RobZolkos, the login shell also looks in /etc/paths and the files inside /etc/paths.d/. One path entry per line in these files.

See /etc/profile and the manual page for path_helper.

Answer 5

Insert in .bashrc these lines of code:

function pathadd {              # Add new element to PATH
  if ! echo $PATH | egrep -q "(:|^)$1(:|$)"
  then if [ "$2" = "after" ]
       then PATH="$PATH:$1"
       else PATH="$1:$PATH"
       fi
  fi
}

then type a command like: pathadd /opt/local/bin or pathadd /opt/local/bin after.