[Tutor] Confusion with $PATH

[Kent Johnson]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 10:39 AM, David Eric <ciik13 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very new to python..getting accustomed to files, directories etc
> I installed a few versions of python and ended up with a very long PATH
> variable, do i need this or can i change it to something shorter?
> Doing an online tutorial one exercise was to move a simple program,
> helloworld into the PATH so i could run it just by typing it in terminal
> window....i moved it into /Library and says file not found..
> any advice?
> THe following is what comes up for PATH
>
> /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.1/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.0/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

That doesn't look so long to me.

Moving your Python file to /Libraries doesn't put it in your PATH, it
has to be in one of the directories named in PATH.

Wayne's suggestion is a good one if you want to have your own programs
that you can run from any directory on the command line. I would call
it bin, though, not .bin, for consistency with the other bin
directories. On a Mac I think the path would be
/Users/your_name/bin

Kent