Change Path in Linux

How can I edit the $PATH on linux?

To permanently store your path, you have a few options.

I suggest you read the Ubuntu community wiki on Environment Variables but the short answer is the best place is ~/.profile for your per-user PATH setting or /etc/profile for global settings.

Change PATH:

  1. Append something to your PATH

    export PATH=$PATH:/your/new/path/here
  2. Override your PATH (save backup before!)

    export PATH=:/your/new/path/here:/another/new/path/here

How to permanently set $PATH on Linux/Unix

There are multiple ways to do it. The actual solution depends on the purpose.

The variable values are usually stored in either a list of assignments or a shell script that is run at the start of the system or user session. In case of the shell script you must use a specific shell syntax and export or set commands.

System wide

  1. /etc/environment List of unique assignments. Allows references. Perfect for adding system-wide directories like /usr/local/something/bin to PATH variable or defining JAVA_HOME. Used by PAM and systemd.

  2. /etc/environment.d/*.conf List of unique assignments. Allows references. Perfect for adding system-wide directories like /usr/local/something/bin to PATH variable or defining JAVA_HOME. The configuration can be split into multiple files, usually one per each tool (Java, Go, and Node.js). Used by systemd that by design do not pass those values to user login shells.

  3. /etc/xprofile Shell script executed while starting X Window System session. This is run for every user that logs into X Window System. It is a good choice for PATH entries that are valid for every user like /usr/local/something/bin. The file is included by other script so use POSIX shell syntax not the syntax of your user shell.

  4. /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/* Shell script. This is a good choice for shell-only systems. Those files are read only by shells in login mode.

  5. /etc/<shell>.<shell>rc. Shell script. This is a poor choice because it is single shell specific. Used in non-login mode.

User session

  1. ~/.pam_environment. List of unique assignments, no references allowed. Loaded by PAM at the start of every user session irrelevant if it is an X Window System session or shell. You cannot reference other variables including HOME or PATH so it has limited use. Used by PAM.

  2. ~/.xprofile Shell script. This is executed when the user logs into X Window System system. The variables defined here are visible to every X application. Perfect choice for extending PATH with values such as ~/bin or ~/go/bin or defining user specific GOPATH or NPM_HOME. The file is included by other script so use POSIX shell syntax not the syntax of your user shell. Your graphical text editor or IDE started by shortcut will see those values.

  3. ~/.profile, ~/.<shell>_profile, ~/.<shell>_login Shell script. It will be visible only for programs started from terminal or terminal emulator. It is a good choice for shell-only systems. Used by shells in login mode.

  4. ~/.<shell>rc. Shell script. This is a poor choice because it is single shell specific. Used by shells in non-login mode.

Notes

GNOME on Wayland starts a user login shell to get the environment. It effectively uses the login shell configurations ~/.profile, ~/.<shell>_profile, ~/.<shell>_login files.

Man pages

  • environment
  • environment.d https://linux.die.net/man/1/environment.d
  • bash
  • dash

Distribution-specific documentation

  • Ubuntu
  • Arch Linux

Difference between Login Shell and Non-Login Shell?

What is this $PATH in Linux and how to modify it

To get your path current $PATH variable type in:

echo $PATH 

It tells your shell where to look for binaries.

Yes, you can change it - for example add to the $PATH folder with your custom scripts.

So: if your scripts are in /usr/local/myscripts to execute them you will have to type in a full path to the script: /usr/local/myscripts/myscript.sh
After changing your $PATH variable you can just type in myscript.sh to execute script.

Here is an example of $PATH from RHEL:

/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/home/user/bin

To change your $PATH you have to either edit ~/.profile (or ~/.bash_profile) for user or global $PATH setting in /etc/profile.

One of the consequences of having inaccurate $PATH variables is that shell will not be able to find and execute programs without a full $PATH.

Change path in linux

If you put the following in your .bashrc you will get the newer R first, because bash will search that directory before the other one.

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

Update: Since the OP is apparently using tcsh, the correct way to set the path is to use setenv inside ~/.profile or ~/.tcshrc.

setenv PATH /usr/local/bin:$PATH

How do I change the order of $PATH?

You can set your PATH in the file .bash_profile, which is in your home directory.

More specifically, you can simply add the following line to the end of that file

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH

This results in /usr/local/bin being prepended to the existing PATH. In other words, the folder /usr/local/bin is inserted in front of your PATH, and so it would have the highest priority. You can also append a folder to your path by doing

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

In general, you can set the order of the folders or files that you export in a similar way as the following:

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin:/Users/pathreskoo/anaconda/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin

Note: this is not the only place you can set the PATH, but it is a common one.

Set a temporary environment ($PATH)

When I have several variables to set, I write a wrapper script which I then use as a prefix to the command that I want to modify. That lets me use the prefix either

  • applying to a single command, such as make, or
  • initializing a shell, so that subsequent commands use the altered settings.

I use wrappers for

  • setting compiler options (such as clang, to set the CC variable, making configure scripts "see" it as the chosen compiler),
  • setting locale variables, to test with POSIX C versus en_US versus en_US.UTF-8, etc.
  • testing with reduced environments, such as in cron.

Each of the wrappers does what is needed to identify the proper PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and similar variables.

For example, I wrote this ad hoc script about ten years ago to test with a local build of python:

#!/bin/bash
ver=2.4.2
export TOP=/usr/local/python-$ver
export PATH=$TOP/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`newpath -n LD_LIBRARY_PATH -bd $TOP/lib $TOP/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/$ver`
if test -d $TOP
then
exec $*
else
echo no $TOP
exit 1
fi

and used it as with-python-2.4.2 myscript.

Some wrappers simply call another script.
For example, I use this wrapper around the configure script to setup variables for cross-compiling:

#!/bin/sh
# $Id: cfg-mingw,v 1.7 2014/09/20 20:49:31 tom Exp $
# configure to cross-compile using mingw32

BUILD_CC=${CC:-gcc}
unset CC
unset CXX

TARGET=`choose-mingw32`

if test -n "$TARGET"
then
PREFIX=
test -d /usr/$TARGET && PREFIX="--prefix=/usr/$TARGET"
cfg-normal \
--with-build-cc=$BUILD_CC \
--host=$TARGET \
--target=$TARGET \
$PREFIX "$@"
else
echo "? cannot find MinGW compiler in path"
exit 1
fi

where choose-mingw32 and cfg-normal are scripts that (a) find the available target name for the cross-compiler and (b) provide additional options to the configure script.

Others may suggest shell aliases or functions. I do not use those for this purpose because my command-line shell is usually tcsh, while I run these commands from (a) other shell scripts, (b) directory editor, or (c) text-editor. Those use the POSIX shell (except of course, for scripts requiring specific features), making aliases or functions of little use.

How do I set Path Variables in Linux just like in windows?

You could set your path variable but you really shouldn't be doing it like that.

Since you don't specify which version of Linux I'll be explaining it for Ubuntu and Arch Linux.

You should install openjdk packages with your package manager like so:

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk

Arch linux:

sudo pacman -S jdk8-openjdk

You can then use the following commands to change between those versions:

Ubuntu

sudo update-alternatives --config java

Arch Linux

archlinux-java set java-8-openjdk

You can even launch specific apps in specific versions but this would be too much to cover for now.



Setting the path variable regardless

To change your $PATH you have to either edit ~/.profile (or ~/.bash_profile) for each user or global $PATH setting in /etc/profile.

Simply append another path to it like so:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/custom/path

You can also do:

PATH = $PATH:/custom/path


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