Environment Variables macOS & WIndows - macos

In Windows' Environment Variable Tab, the User Variable and System Variables are separated. I have a MacBook Pro and would like to add new 'user' variables like Windows. Is this possible? I mean I found there are temporary variables that can be created in the Terminal, but if that Terminal is closed, the variables are gone. I found a way to do a permanent variable, but do not want to mess things up in the core of the macOS. Are there any recommendations?

If you set variables in the ~/.bash_profile file, they will always exist since this file is automatically run every time you open Terminal.
To edit it:
vim .bash_profile
(i to insert text, esc to exit insert mode, :q! to discard and quit, :x to save and quit)
Then add:
export VARIABLE_NAME=value
Save and quit the editor (:x). Then to check if it worked:
echo $VARIABLE_NAME

When the terminal is bash, editing the .bash_profile works.
If you're using zsh, then edit
~/.zsh and add the command as
""export variableName = value"" in to the file
Now, run
""source ~/.zsh""

Related

permanently source in terminal (Mac OS)

this is probably a very basic question. I am using the bash shell still (Catalina). And I downloaded gromacs. Every time I open a new terminal window I first have to put
source /usr/local/gromacs/bin/GMXRC
in first, otherwise I will just get command not found.
How can I permanently source this so that I don't have to reenter it all the time?
I tried editing the /etc/paths file but that didn't work.
If you are still using the bash shell on macOS, all you have to do is:
Put the line:
source /usr/local/gromacs/bin/GMXRC
at the end in .bash_profile.
.bash_profile is in home directory, so you can open it like:
open ~/.bash_profile
Why .bash_profile?
.bash_profile is executed whenever a login interactive shell starts and on mac, every interactive shell is a login shell by default.
If in case you switch to zsh, instead of .bash_profile, I think .zlogin should be used.
But that would depend entirely on your need. Read about zsh configuration files in case you ever need that.

Catch-22 UNIX Shell Zsh

I was fooling around with .zshrc files, and now I am locked out of my terminal with "No such shell function 'accept-line'".
It would be easy to just go and undo the change in the .zshrc file, but my terminal autoloads into zsh, so there is no way to edit the dotfile.
I have looked all around for a way to edit hidden files in El Capitan, but to no avail.
From your mention of 'El Capitan' I infer that you might be on OS X and using Terminal.app? If so, please add a tag for that, or state that clearly.
If so, you could duplicate a Terminal profile in the preferences and under Settings->Shell / Startup set e.g. /bin/bash as the command and untick "run inside shell". That should give you a bash which will ignore .zshrc.
Otherwise, look for similar settings in your terminal emulator. Most should have such a setting somewhere.

Terminal configuration is incorrect

I'm having issues with two parts of my Terminal installation in particular.
The first is the prompt area. Look at how on each new line it says 108% instead of >. I'd like to know how I can switch that back to >.
![Image of Terminal][1]
The second issue is that I'm having issues setting my $EDITOR variable for tmux to work.
I've worked and set up the .tmux.conf file, and used the following line to attempt to set the editor:
EDITOR = "vim"
I was able to solve this issue with the following:
For the first issue (108 was set as my prompt), I went into my .zshrc file and added export PS1="%/$ ", then saved the file. My command prompt instantly changed back to normal, and I was fine.
For the second issue (echo $EDITOR was not returning anything, so tmux was not generating new projects), I simply entered my .zshrc file, and I added export before EDITOR so that the line looked like export EDITOR="vim".

How to run ~/.bash_profile in mac terminal

So I'm installing some things for coding and personal usage, and I need to run this in the terminal (I'm on Mac if you didn't read the title).
~/.bash_profile
It just says permission denied, Im running OSX 10.8.4 Mountain Lion. How do I bypass this?
On MacOS: add source ~/.bash_profile to the end of ~/.zshrc.
Then this profile will be in effect when you open zsh.
You would never want to run that, but you may want to source it.
. ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
both should work. But this is an odd request, because that file should be sourced automatically when you start bash, unless you're explicitly starting it non-interactively. From the man page:
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
If you change .bash_profile, it only applies to new Terminal sessions.
To apply it to an existing session, run source ~/.bash_profile. You can run any Bash script this way - think of executing source as the same as typing commands in the Terminal window (from the specified script).
More info: How to reload .bash_profile from the command line?
Bonus: You can make environment variables available to OSX applications - not just the current Bash session but apps like Visual Studio Code or IntelliJ - using launchctl setenv GOPATH "${GOPATH:-}"
As #kojiro said, you don't want to "run" this file. Source it as he says. It should get "sourced" at startup. Sourcing just means running every line in the file, including the one you want to get run. If you want to make sure a folder is in a certain path environment variable (as it seems you want from one of your comments on another solution), execute
$ echo $PATH
At the command line. If you want to check that your ~/.bash_profile is being sourced, either at startup as it should be, or when you source it manually, enter the following line into your ~/.bash_profile file:
$ echo "Hello I'm running stuff in the ~/.bash_profile!"
No need to start, it would automatically executed while you startup your mac terminal / bash. Whenever you do a change, you may need to restart the terminal.
~ is the default path for .bash_profile
I was getting this error on zsh(mac os Big Sur 11.3), This is how i solved this :-
Go to Terminal.
cd /users/<yourusername>
Once you reach here issue a command :
ls -al
You will see a lot of files and one specific file .zprofile. This is your user profile. We need to edit this.
After this we need to edit the file. Issue the below command :
nano .zprofile
Once you issue this command file will be opened for edit. Add the path details for maven.
M2_PATH="/Users//code/apache-maven-3.8.1/bin" //add your path of maven diretory
PATH="${PATH}:${M2_PATH}"
export PATH
press ctrl + X and save the file.
Issue command after saving the file :
source .zprofile
Once done, you will be able to run the mvn command.
If the problem is that you are not seeing your changes to the file take effect, just open a new terminal window, and it will be "sourced". You will be able to use the proper PATH etc with each subsequent terminal window.

Change in the hostname/user in Terminal in Leopard OSX

My terminal previously showed subalcharla$ at the command line.
The terminial is now showing subalcharla#subal-charlas-macbook ~ $.
How do I go back to the original setting?
What is the difference between the two?
How did this get changed without my doing so?
At the end of ~/.profile add the line
export PS1='\u$ '
to get your old prompt back.
To do this you can type
nano ~/.profile
which will bring up a text editor. Press down until you get to the bottom of the file. Hit Enter to create a new line, and paste in
export PS1='\u$ '
Press Control+X to exit the editor and say "yes" when asked if you want to save. Now restart your terminal and your prompt should be restored.
The first prompt you gave shows your username, the second shows your username and hostname. There is no error and the functionality of your bash shell is not changed by changing the prompt.
Something must have changed your PS1 environment variable, maybe a system update or the installation of software. It's probably benign though.
I don't know how it got changed, but it's controlled by some symbol definitions. Use "man bash" in the terminal and search for the section called "PROMPTING". There are symbols named PS1-to-4 that it uses to construct the prompt.

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