[Techtalk] Help, I'm stumbling on the PATH

[Malcolm Tredinnick]

On Sun, Feb 23, 2003 at 07:54:51PM -0500, Beth Johnson wrote:
> A little help needed here!

Other people have answered your specific question, but I thought I might
be able to help by explaining what the script does.

[...]
> # /etc/profile
> 
> # System wide environment and startup programs, for login setup
> # Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc
> 
> pathmunge () {

This is a function that is called later in the script to add things to
the PATH environment variable.

> 	if ! echo $PATH | /bin/egrep -q "(^|:)$1($|:)" ; then

First it checks to see if the first argument to pathmunge() is already
in $PATH. If so, nothing happens, otherwise...

> 	   if [ "$2" = "after" ] ; then

...if the second argument is "after"...
> 	      PATH=$PATH:$1
add the first argument to the end of the $PATH variable.

> 	   else
> 	      PATH=$1:$PATH

Otherwise, add the first argument to the front of the $PATH variable.

> 	   fi
> 	fi
> }
> 
> # Path manipulation
> if [ `id -u` = 0 ]; then
> 	pathmunge /sbin
> 	pathmunge /usr/sbin
> 	pathmunge /usr/local/sbin
> fi
> 
> pathmunge /usr/X11R6/bin after

For example, this adds /usr/X11R6/bin to the end of whatever $PATH is at
this point.

> 
> unset pathmunge

This removes the pathmunge() function from your environment, since it
was only needed by this script.

> # No core files by default
> ulimit -S -c 0 > /dev/null 2>&1
> 
> USER="`id -un`"
> LOGNAME=$USER
> MAIL="/var/spool/mail/$USER"
> 
> HOSTNAME=`/bin/hostname`
> HISTSIZE=1000
> 
> if [ -z "$INPUTRC" -a ! -f "$HOME/.inputrc" ]; then
>     INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
> fi
> 
> export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC
> 
> for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh ; do
>     if [ -r "$i" ]; then
>     	. $i
>     fi
> done
> 
> unset i

Maybe this is useful for you, I don't know.

Cheers,
Malcolm

-- 
He who laughs last thinks slowest.