PATH preferences

bman

Hi,

Could anyone here tell me how to give preference to my ~/bin directory over /bin or /usr/bin etc.

For example, if my ~/bin folder contained a script called tail, how could I specify that when I type tail that the command executed is the ~/bin/tail script rather than the /usr/bin/tail script?

bman

Another one of these posts where I end up answering my own question! I should really spend more time on the problem before posting!

The shell seems to look through the directories in the path in order and whenever it gets the command that corresponds it executes it. So if my ~/bin directory is in the path before /usr/bin then it will execute the command in the ~/bin directory only.

dubhthach

bman wrote: »

Another one of these posts where I end up answering my own question! I should really spend more time on the problem before posting!

The shell seems to look through the directories in the path in order and whenever it gets the command that corresponds it executes it. So if my ~/bin directory is in the path before /usr/bin then it will execute the command in the ~/bin directory only.

Indeed for example in your .bash_profile you can set your path to be:
PATH = ~/bin:$PATH

so ~/bin is checked first before what ever else is in $PATH