export PATH= not holding in Bash OS X

This is somewhat of a noob question but I'm having problems adding to my path and can't remember how I got changes working the last time I did it.

So I'm using the command "export PATH=$PATH:/Users/evanmcdonnal/go/bin" to modify my path. Then I use echo $PATH and it displays my previous path with the above appended. The problem is, when I quit the terminal and open it again the changes are gone. Is there something I'm missing here that is necessary for it to make the changes permanent? I tried editing the paths file in etc directly but the OS won't let me without root privileges and it seems like a bit of a hassle to obtain those.

evanmcdonnal

Posted 2012-02-15T06:49:50.873

Reputation: 2 408

Answers

You need to add this line to the file .bash_profile in your home directory to have this modification of PATH apply to all Terminal/bash sessions.

Daniel Beck

Posted 2012-02-15T06:49:50.873

Reputation: 98 421

1.bash_profile does not exist on my system. Neither does .profile

Should I create it? If so what is the syntax for specifying the path? – evanmcdonnal – 2012-02-15T07:22:09.290

3Create it if it doesn't exist. The syntax is identical to what you run on the command line, as it just gets executed upon start of a login shell session. – Daniel Beck – 2012-02-15T07:32:52.997