Re: Leopard Migration Hammered Mutt

[c4c4@xxxxxxxxxxx]

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 <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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> On Monday, January 28 at 02:49 AM, quoth c4c4@xxxxxxxxxxx:
> > 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 couldnâ??t 
> hear the barbarians coming.
>                                                     -- Garrison Keillor
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