I was wondering how to properly edit a path for both a specific user and for all users. I read the document in /etc/profiles that stated not to edit that file, but rather create a profile for each user. I need to add a path to my profile, and saw that in ~/.profile there were some path statements. I'm not too familiar with the syntax in /etc/profiles, but I need to add a path to /usr/local/sbin at least for my account, but possibly for all users as well. I saw a statement in /etc/profiles similar to the following:

PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin: (and so forth)

but it was preceded by a few statements that appeared to be setting the paths if certain conditions were met, so I am not sure about this. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

To see what is currently in the users path, from the command line, do

echo $PATH

to add to the path, do

PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
export PATH

Thanks for the reply. This seemed to work, however it did not save the changes once I exited from the console and started a new one. Do I have to use the sudo command in order to save the cahnges? Also, does this attempt to update the local user path, or system-wide?