It's saying 'permission denied' because you are trying to run the .bash_profile as a command. when you type ~/.bash_profile
you haven't given it a command to execute against the file.
Because the filename starts with a '.' it is a hidden file. Daniel Beck told you how to find the file in the file listing of TextEdit.
in a terminal window if you type ls -la
it will give you a listing (ls
) of all the files in a directory with a long format (-l
) which provides more information about the files including ownership privileges. the (-a
) will show all files, including the hidden ones.
if you type edit .bash_profile
in a terminal window, it will open the file in a text editor. Also you can cat .bash_profile
which will output the contents of the file directly into the terminal window so that you can review it, (you can't edit it, but you can at least look at it).
More help from the folks here will come if you can at least give the output of the file listing command: ls -la
for the .bash_profile file.
@Nader just use "cmd + ↑" to go back to your home directory, where you'll find
.bash_profile
– Mohit G. – 2019-06-03T09:27:00.907Thanks for the response. I don't understand how to select .bash_profile where exactly in my home directory is it supposed to be located? – Nader – 2011-12-19T07:02:52.737
It's supposed to be right there. Unless you actually haven't created the file yet. If it's not there, you can just create it with that name. It might be good to know what exactly you typed before you had the issue. And give us the output of
ls -la ~
. – slhck – 2011-12-19T07:30:51.060