How to save environment variable from Terminal?

Question

I am trying to save the PATH environment variable from the Terminal running on a Ubuntu system.

I typed in the following however it does not get saved.

export PATH=/home/david/Komodo-Edit-6/bin/:$PATH

Any suggestions on how I can fix this? Thank you.

Solution

Add that line to ~/.bashrc, or the appropriate configuration file for your shell.

Comments

[David]

To you mean this export PATH=/home/david/Komodo-Edit-6/bin/:$PATH ~/.bashrc, because it doesn't work. I am using the bash shell.

[HikeMike]

@David No. I mean to edit the file ~/.bashrc and add the export statement to its contents.

[David]

Thanks, I eventually edited /root/.bash_profile and it now works.

[user1686]

@Daniel: In the specific case of appending/prepending to $PATH environment variable, the profile file is even better, because 1) the new value is exported to other processes anyway, and 2) if it was in bashrc, then you could end up with the same directory 3 or 4 times.

[HikeMike]

@grawity I read that .profile is ignored if .bashrc or .bash_profile exist and don't load it explicitly. Is this wrong?

[user1686]

@Daniel: In login shell mode, bash looks for .bash_profile, .bash_login, .profile (in that order) and only uses the first one found. (See manual page of bash(1), section "INVOCATION".) In my previous comment, by saying "profile file" I was referring to all three files.

[user1686]

@Daniel: For completeness: In non-login mode, bash only looks for .bashrc.

[HikeMike]

@grawity That's what I read too (although I didn't really understand your comment, as should be obvious), and thought I remembered .bash_profile usually loading .bashrc on Linux, so it seemed the best choice.