CODEWITHSUNDEEP
clinuxbash
bluepinto
bluepinto

Reputation: 165

How to make my Linux C program accessible from bash

Say I made and compiled a small program in C to count the bytes of a file, called filebyte. To run it I would use ./filebyte

Now I want to make it universal on bash, like for example to run a php file, I would use bash command php file.php, same way I would like to run my program, filebyte filename.

How do I do this?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 194

Answers (3)

Jonathon Reinhart
Jonathon Reinhart

Reputation: 137467

I often create a bin/ directory in my home directory, for small custom applications.

You then need to add that directory to your PATH, which is a list of colon-separated paths that your shell searches for executables when you type a name on thr command line.

This is usually accomplished by putting this in your ~/.bashrc file:

PATH="$PATH:~/bin"

Upvotes: 3

Inian
Inian

Reputation: 85790

If you want it for your current active shell alone, do

export PATH=$PATH:</path/to/file>

For permanently making the file available add the above line to ~/.bashrc

Why add it in PATH variable, man bash says why,

   PATH   The search path for commands.  It is a colon-separated list of 
          directories in which the shell looks for commands (see COMMAND 
          EXECUTION below).  A zero-length (null) directory  name  in the 
          value of PATH indicates the current directory.  A null directory 
          name may appear as two adjacent colons, or as an initial or 
          trailing colon.  The default path is system-dependent, and is set 
          by the administrator who installs bash.  A common value is 
          ''/usr/gnu/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/bin''.

Upvotes: 1

mic4ael
mic4ael

Reputation: 8310

Check the environment variable PATH and put the executable in one of the directories listed. You can also put it in a custom directory and then append it to PATH. You can check it by executing printenv PATH

Upvotes: 1

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