The PATH
is an important concept when working on the command line. It's a list of directories that tell your operating system where to look for programs, so that you can just write script
instead of /home/me/bin/script
or C:\Users\Me\bin\script
. But different operating systems have different ways to add a new directory to it:
For Windows
-
The first step depends which version of Windows you're using:
-
If you're using Windows 8 or 10, press the Windows key, then search for and select "System (Control Panel)".
-
If you're using Windows 7, right click the "Computer" icon on the desktop and click "Properties".
-
Click "Advanced system settings".
-
Click "Environment Variables".
-
Under "System Variables", find the PATH
variable, select it, and click "Edit". If there is no PATH
variable, click "New".
-
Add your directory to the beginning of the variable value followed by ;
(a semicolon). For example, if the value was C:\Windows\System32
, change it to C:\Users\Me\bin;C:\Windows\System32
.
-
Click "OK".
-
Restart your terminal.
For Mac OS X
-
Open the .bash_profile
file in your home directory (for example, /Users/your-user-name/.bash_profile
) in a text editor.
-
Add export PATH="your-dir:$PATH"
to the last line of the file, where your-dir is the directory you want to add.
-
Save the .bash_profile
file.
-
Restart your terminal.
For Linux
-
Open the .bashrc
file in your home directory (for example, /home/your-user-name/.bashrc
) in a text editor.
-
Add export PATH="your-dir:$PATH"
to the last line of the file, where your-dir is the directory you want to add.
-
Save the .bashrc
file.
-
Restart your terminal.
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