Red Hat Knowledgebase

If you put an executable program on your filesystem, and ask to execute somewhere else in your filesystem

For example, you put a program named 'an_executable' in a hypothetical directory '/programs' and you are in the directory '/data', and you type 'an_executable' in the command line, then the program 'an_executable' will only run if the directory '/programs' is the PATH.

The PATH is already set to include the following directories:

/usr/bin/ /bin/ /usr/local/bin/

If you want to see a full list, you can run the command:

set | grep PATH

-or-

 echo $PATH

If you want to add a new directory to the PATH, you can edit the .bash_profile in a users home directory. This file executes when you log in and sets the PATH with the following line:

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

If you want to add a new directory to the path (e.g. '/programs'), then you will change the above line to read

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:/programs

(Notice the colon ':' between the directories)

The PATH now includes the directory '/programs' the next time you log in to the system.