export PATH= not holding in Bash OS X

Question

This is somewhat of a noob question but I'm having problems adding to my path and can't remember how I got changes working the last time I did it.

So I'm using the command "export PATH=$PATH:/Users/evanmcdonnal/go/bin" to modify my path. Then I use echo $PATH and it displays my previous path with the above appended. The problem is, when I quit the terminal and open it again the changes are gone. Is there something I'm missing here that is necessary for it to make the changes permanent? I tried editing the paths file in etc directly but the OS won't let me without root privileges and it seems like a bit of a hassle to obtain those.

Solution

You need to add this line to the file .bash_profile in your home directory to have this modification of PATH apply to all Terminal/bash sessions.

Comments

[evanmcdonnal]

.bash_profile does not exist on my system. Neither does .profile Should I create it? If so what is the syntax for specifying the path?

[HikeMike]

Create it if it doesn't exist. The syntax is identical to what you run on the command line, as it just gets executed upon start of a login shell session.