How to change a particular path from the environment variable PATH?

Question

I incorrectly declared a variable, and now it has two forward slashes in it. How do I unset/correct it?

PATH=...ols-1.3-62308//bin:/bin

Thanks.

Answer 1

In this particular example, do nothing: the double slash is exactly equivalent to a single slash.

If you really want to remove double slashes: PATH=${PATH//\/\//\/}

Removing the first entry: PATH=${PATH#*:}
Removing the last entry: PATH=${PATH%:*}
Removing an entry from the middle is more fiddly, and not really worth it on the command line.

There are ways to get the value of a variable into the command line editor:

• In zsh, you would simply run vared PATH.
• In bash, run history -s "PATH=$PATH" to push the assignment into the command history, then press Up to bring up the last entry and edit it. (Zsh: print -s PATH=$PATH)
• In bash, type PATH=$PATH, then press Ctrl+Meta+E (shell-expand-line). (Zsh: press Ctrl+X * to expand the word at or before the cursor.)

Answer 2

There is a similar post on stackoverflow: What is the most elegant way to remove a path from the $PATH variable in Bash?. Just have a look.

Answer 3

You will want to include the $PATH

if you're using bash you usually want to set something like the line below in your .bashrc file:

PATH=$PATH:/path/to/new/directory/

ie. $PATH is your currnet PATH

and /path/to/new/directory is the path where the new binaries are stored.

in my case I tend to have some scripts in my $HOME/bin so I would do: PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

then make sure to source the file to apply the changes to your current shell.

ie. source ~/.bashrc or . ~/.bashrc