Kinda pointless
Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#12I think for most of its use-cases, you could replace it with a one-liner: alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n} ' and work with it via sort and uniq. I've had this alias in my configuration for a couple of decades now, so I'm not bashing on its usefulness though.
or you could just check env for a special variable and load a file once if the env var exists.
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#13I'd like to hear viewpoints on using `~/.zprofile` versus `~/.zshrc` for setting `$PATH` on macOS. I was bothered for years that I didn't know the difference so I dived down the rabbit hole and wrote a guide [1]. In the end, I concluded: - Use `~/.zprofile` to set the PATH and EDITOR environment variables. - Use `~/.zshrc` for aliases and a custom prompt, or anything tweaking the appearance and behavior of the termin…
Your assessment is correct. But it really comes down to what type of shell that's running. For an interactive shell (one you open yourself in a terminal), the run-com file (.zshrc) will be loaded, so anywhere you put it, things will seemingly work. But if you start doing some task scheduling etc, that would fail if you have set your PATH in a run-com.
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#14I'd like to hear viewpoints on using `~/.zprofile` versus `~/.zshrc` for setting `$PATH` on macOS. I was bothered for years that I didn't know the difference so I dived down the rabbit hole and wrote a guide [1]. In the end, I concluded: - Use `~/.zprofile` to set the PATH and EDITOR environment variables. - Use `~/.zshrc` for aliases and a custom prompt, or anything tweaking the appearance and behavior of the termin…
I set $PATH in ~/.zshenv. If you don't, you can't use any of your "extra stuff" in your zsh-scripts, as they do not use login or interactive sessions. And then I unset GLOBAL_RCS so the system configfiles don't override my settings.
In your guide, under ~/.zshenv, you mention that "macOS overrides this for PATH settings for interactive shells", without mentioning why or how. What's happening is that macOS sets your path in /etc/zprofile.
It seems your guide is missing a few global configfiles :) This is the order for an interactive login shell [1]:
/etc/zshenv
${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zshenv
/etc/zprofile (login)
${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zprofile (login)
/etc/zshrc (interactive)
${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zshrc (interactive)
/etc/zlogin (login)
${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zlogin (login)
/etc/zlogout (login - loaded on logout)
${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zlogout (login - loaded on logout)
1: https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Doc/Release/Files.html>
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#15For zsh I use this to setup $PATH, which seems to address most of the use cases of this tool: ### Setup PATH dirs=( /usr/lib/ccache/bin # ccache ~/.local/script ~/.local/bin # My local scripts. ~/.local/gobin # GOBIN /usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin # local takes precedence /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin # Standard Unix /usr/pkg/bin /usr/pkg/sbin # NetBSD /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/X11R6/sbin # OpenBSD /opt/ooce/bin # illumos…
Plan 9 from User Space binaries are on /usr/local/plan9/bin/ on OpenBSD.
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#16For zsh I use this to setup $PATH, which seems to address most of the use cases of this tool: ### Setup PATH dirs=( /usr/lib/ccache/bin # ccache ~/.local/script ~/.local/bin # My local scripts. ~/.local/gobin # GOBIN /usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin # local takes precedence /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin # Standard Unix /usr/pkg/bin /usr/pkg/sbin # NetBSD /usr/X11R6/bin /usr/X11R6/sbin # OpenBSD /opt/ooce/bin # illumos…
I use 'path=( ${(u)^path:A}(N-/) )' instead of that for loop
To just reduce the current entries to those that exist, I'd probably do
PATH=$(perl -e 'print join ":", grep -d, split ":", $ENV{PATH}')
(this doesn't mean the shell clever is bad, it just means I don't find -that- dialect of line noise as skimmable)
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#17I'd like to hear viewpoints on using `~/.zprofile` versus `~/.zshrc` for setting `$PATH` on macOS. I was bothered for years that I didn't know the difference so I dived down the rabbit hole and wrote a guide [1]. In the end, I concluded: - Use `~/.zprofile` to set the PATH and EDITOR environment variables. - Use `~/.zshrc` for aliases and a custom prompt, or anything tweaking the appearance and behavior of the termin…
I set $PATH in ~/.zshenv. If you don't, you can't use any of your "extra stuff" in your zsh-scripts, as they do not use login or interactive sessions. And then I unset GLOBAL_RCS so the system configfiles don't override my settings. In your guide, under ~/.zshenv, you mention that "macOS overrides this for PATH settings for interactive shells", without mentioning why or how. What's happening is that macOS sets your p…
Thank you! That's informative.
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#18Kinda pointless
I like it! I do the steps involved in this occasionally, manually. It’s not hard but this makes it nice. Not sure I’ll use it since it is one more thing to install and remember, but the author had an itch and scratched it. Well done.
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#19Kinda pointless
I like it! I do the steps involved in this occasionally, manually. It’s not hard but this makes it nice. Not sure I’ll use it since it is one more thing to install and remember, but the author had an itch and scratched it. Well done.
Thanks! Indeed an itch that was both on Linux and Windows - so a tool that I could use in either environment
Re: Show HN: Justpath – a simple utility to explore the PATH environment variable
#20I’m struggling to understand the use case for this aside from just checking if your own directory is on the path.
For me the use case was trying to understand what directories should I clean from path and if there where duplicates. Just something to help understand if my PATH on Windows was repetitive or not.