Environment variables won't take effect on Mac OS X

1

I've been trying back and forth to set environment variables in the Terminal.app but it won't take any effect.

Here's the scenario: With the Terminal open I write 

pico .profile

Then in the editor I enter 

export JAVA_HOME="Library/Java/Home"
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Then I press ctrl+x to exit and y to save. I exit the terminal and when I open it up again and write

echo $JAVA_HOME

I only get an empty line. Can I edit the .profile in another way? I've tried every possible combination to set this variable but I keep getting an empty line. I have restarted the system several times with no luck at all.

madcoderz

Posted 2011-10-14T22:21:57.043

Reputation: 187

1

It sounds like the .profile file is not being used. Are you sure it is ~/.profile that is being modified? And the permissions are correct? (I am not sure what shell OS X uses by default, but here is the relevant section in bash.)

– pst – 2011-10-14T22:36:29.620

i just noticed that every time i save the .profile generates a new file every time i save and names it profile.save.2 and the number increases as i keep saving it. I don't think that's right. Any ideas? – madcoderz – 2011-10-14T22:46:08.280

what is the output of: cat .profile ? – None – 2011-10-14T22:56:54.780

i wrote cat .profile and i got No such file or directory i'm i doing something wrong? – madcoderz – 2011-10-15T04:35:39.610

By the way, this was working when i had Leopard as soon as i updated the operative system to OSX Lion the problem started happening. – madcoderz – 2011-10-15T04:42:03.023

Answers

2

I solved this problem by editing the ~/.bash_profile instead.

When you use pico .profile instead of editing the file, which will make a new file, I chose "read file" (I think it is ctrl=r) and it showed me a lot of files. From there I chose .bash_profile.

That was my solution. I don't know if it's the best solution but it worked for me.

madcoderz

Posted 2011-10-14T22:21:57.043

Reputation: 187

If ~/.bash_profile exists, bash will not read ~/.profile. So whatever you write in there won't ever be parsed. – slhck – 2011-10-26T20:52:16.973

Asked: 2011-10-14T22:21:57.043

Viewed: 487 times

Active: 2011-10-26T20:50:49.110