Mac OS X Installation Problem

[Matt]

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?

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 
my own using bash and nano, but got stuck with the save command. It looks like 
I am supposed to use the "M-O" command to save it in Mac format, but I have no 
idea how to type that. A search of the nano docs for "M-O" didn't turn up 
anything either. I also tried to make a .bashrc file on my Windows box and 
copy it to my Mac, but the Finder gave me an error message saying that I'm not 
allowed to make files that begin with a dot.

Is there a web page somewhere that explains this?

Thanks,
Matt