CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosbashshellcommand-lineterminal
m81
m81

Reputation: 2317

Which files affect the path in bash on Mac OS X?

I'm debugging a bash program, and I'm a bit confused about how the PATH is set in Mac OS X. For example, I have a relatively fresh laptop which has Server.app and homebrew installed but not much else. When I delete my ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile files, and do echo $PATH, I get:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/bin:/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin

How is my PATHbeing modified?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 430

Answers (1)

Doon
Doon

Reputation: 20232

what you are looking for is path_helper

from man path_helper 

  The path_helper utility reads the contents of the files in the directo-
     ries /etc/paths.d and /etc/manpaths.d and appends their contents to the
     PATH and MANPATH environment variables respectively.  (The MANPATH envi-
     ronment variable will not be modified unless it is already set in the
     environment.)

     Files in these directories should contain one path element per line.

     Prior to reading these directories, default PATH and MANPATH values are
     obtained from the files /etc/paths and /etc/manpaths respectively.

if you look it is being called in /etc/profile 

[~] cat /etc/profile
# 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

Upvotes: 2

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