How do you get to $HOME/bin from the Finder on the Mac?

Question

According to the installation instructions for WireShark on the Mac, I need to drag one of the WireShark folders to the folder $HOME/bin.

But using the Finder application, the only folders I see are these:

Applications Developer Library System Users

Solution 1

You can open terminal and type:

open $HOME/bin

if you'd like to find the exact path to that location for future use, type this in terminal (pressing Enter after each line):

cd $HOME/bin
pwd

Solution 2

Go into any finder window, press shift +  + G then type in "~/bin", the window that comes up is your $HOME/bin directory.

Note: By default you do not have a bin directory, you need to create it first by running:

mkdir ~/bin

In your terminal application or creating it in finder.

Solution 3

You can do this from Finder itself just selecting items.

You say "Applications Developer Library System Users" are these really the first things you see I would see these after choosing the Macintosh HD (or what ever you called your disk.

On the left hand side of Finder (OSX 10.5 here but similar in other versions) there are several groups all in capital letters. Devices Shared Places "Search For"

The first entry in the Places group is usually a picture of a house and your login name. Click on this and you are in your home directory and then can see subdirectories e.g. bin if you have created it. (Apple does bot create ~/bin you will have to)

Comments

[s4y]

...Or you can just install MacPorts and install wireshark from there, which is a better option because it'll also keep wireshark up to date and you don't have to go mucking about with directories.

[quack quixote]

you can also type "pwd" into that terminal to see exactly where it is. Terminal should open in your $HOME directory.

[John T]

Was just thinking the same and added it at the same time you made the comment. Great minds think alike :)

[quack quixote]

$HOME is pretty standard in any Unix environment. the $ indicates an environment variable.

[quack quixote]

my only question (not having a Mac to check) is whether OSX home directories had a bin subdirectory by default... ?

[Harley Watson]

@quack, they don't.