Mac OS X Installation Problem

[Alex Martelli]

<Matt> wrote:

> aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) wrote:
> 
> >Edit a ~/.bashrc file to add /usr/local/bin to your PATH.
> 
> Hi Alex,
> 
> Easier said than done for a non-unix expert. Correct me if I am wrong. Bash
> looks at the contents of the PATH variable to decided which directories it
> should scan when parsing a command. If I type "Python -v", it will look in all
> of those directories for a file called "Python" and then execute it, passing
> it the -v parameter. Right?

Right.  The uppercase P in 'Python' would make the search fail in just
about every Unix in the world, but MacOSX is the exception (at least if
you're using its default HFS+ filesystem) and lets you be sloppy with
capitalization.


> I've been googling around for about an hour now, and I can't find any
> instructions on how to create or edit a .bashrc file. I tried to make one of

That depends on what text editor you favour.  Me, I love gvim, but most
people hate it.  MacOSX comes with TextEdit, scarce but really not
controversial, and emacs, the One Editor to Rule Them All.  TextWrangler
and subethaedit, both freely downloadable, are among the most beloved
free editors; BBEdit, I've heard, is widely considered the best for-pay
one.  What text editor you choose to edit text files on MacOSX, be it a
free or for-pay one, is hardly a suitable subject for the
comp.lang.python newsgroup, of course -- I apologize for the OT.

> Is there a web page somewhere that explains this?

There are many, basically one for each text editor program you may
choose.  TextEdit has a predilection for saving .RTF (a marked-up text
format Microsoft Word also likes) rather than plain text files, so I
would not recommend it in general, by the way -- too easy to err.

BTW, like in every other Unix, if you're having problem saving to a
textfile named .foobar, save to foobar without the initial dot, then
from a Terminal prompt, mv foobar .foobar  -- that's all it takes.

There are innumerable books and webpages about MacOSX and other Unix
variants, mostly pretty orthogonal to any Python issues or interests but
nevertheless interesting.  O'Reilly's "Learning Unix for Mac OS X
Tiger", for example, is really quite a good text.


Alex