The PATH is an environment variable that tells the shell where to look for the basic executables (commands) you use (such as ping, useradd, etc). Setting a new PATH depends on the shell, not on the Linux or Unix distro.
The default shell in FreeBSD and PCBSD is the C shell (csh).
In this article I will show you how to set the PATH in csh and tcsh:
To use tcsh in Linux, install it first:
On Debian: sudo apt-get install tcsh
On Fedora: sudo yum install tcsh
On openSUSE: sudo zypper install tcsh
How to set the PATH in csh and tcsh:
I will temporary add the /home/razvan/myscripts in my PATH:
set path = ( $path /path/to/new/dir)
After the first reboot, the PATH changes will be discarded, unless you set them persistently:
$ set path = ($path /home/razvan/myscripts)
The directories in the path are separated one from another by space (white space):
How to set the PATH permanently
To permanently set a new PATH in csh and tcsh add this to your user’s shell configuration file (~cshrc for csh and tcsh):
set path = ($path /path/to/new/dir)
$ echo "set path = ($path /home/razvan/myscripts)" >> ~/.cshrc
For tcsh: If the ~/.tcshrc file exists, this file will be used instead of the ~/.cshrc .
To display the path’s value ($PATH) user: echo $path.
Related reading: How to change the PATH in bash, ksh and zsh.
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