how to change PATH in Debian squeeze
 

Dear all,

I am trying to change my PATH. I recently added a prg to a directory; this prg is a newer version of another prg and I have to install both to get things running. But as I want the newer prg to be tried first (texlive, it's packaged based), I need to add its directory before other directories.

So I added the following at the top of the ~/.bashrc file:
PATH=$PATH:/home/me/newdir
export PATH

then I did
source ~/.bashrc

then:
echo $PATH

and I got:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/home/me/newdir


any idea why /home/me/newdir is not first in the PATH? And how to have it first?

Thanks,

is this a joke?

Well no it is not. I guess there is something that I have not fully understood. Anything more constructive maybe?

Your directory is not the first in PATH because you just put it at the end with:
This statement associates the variable PATH with $PATH (the previous content of PATH) followed by ":" then [yourdir].
You just have to reorder the assignment, like this:

ok, now I get it. Thanks,

Mark the thread as solved, then ;)

done. I didn't know how it worked, sorry. Thx again,