Executable file paths in the Bash shell

W

will103

Registered
Hi, I have recently installed Mac OS 10.3, and am getting to grips with the Bash shell. I compiled the Nano text editor and all went well until I tried to execute it in Bash. I received the following error message

wills-Computer:~ will$ nano
-bash: nano: command not found

Now, it would execute if I included the full file path i.e.

/usr/local/bin/nano

So, I figured that I needed to tell Bash where to look. After some searching on this site and around the web, I created a .bashrc file in my home directory. In this file I included the following

PATH=$PATH:/bin:/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
export PATH

According to what I have read this should have solved the problem. However I continue to get the error message described above.

Can anyone offer any advice on how I can sort this out?

Cheers

will103
 
10.3's bash doesn't use the .bashrc file ...which is a pain. You can edit the /etc/bashrc file, but you'll need to use sudo or be root to do so.
 
Darkshadow,

That isn't entirely true. Yes as installed bash doesn't seem to look for a user's .bashrc file, but you can change that by adding one line to /etc/profile.

Open /etc/profile via your favorite editor (mine is vim) and add the following line:

. ~/.bashrc

note there is a space between the first period and the ~ symbol.

You will probably have to do this using sudo.

sudo vim /etc/profile (or whatever editor you use)

This will allow you to set up a .bashrc file for each individual that has an account on your computer.

Here are a few of the lines I have in my .bashrc

set autolist
set filec
. /sw/bin/init.sh

with the . /sw/bin/init.sh line, I can use fink commands in both the terminal and in x11.

try it, it should work for you.
 
these are all good solutions, but if you don't want to edit global files (those in /etc) you can all all that path and source stuff to ~/.bash_profile.

or even easier for you if you already have ~/.bashrc would be to create ~/.bash_profile and put source ~/.bashrc in it.

bash for os x automagically reads your .bash_profile when it starts up.
 
donkey,

Yep that did the trick as well, I never knew that would work. I followed the instructions off of macosxhints.com which said to edit the /etc/profile file. I would much rather keep any modifications in my home directory than in /etc.

Thanks
 
Sorry for delay in replying folks - have been experiencing some computer problems lately. Thanks for the suggestions. Will try them out soon.

will103
 
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