It is special variable that has a lit of directories there all our applications are located. In other to find out this PATH variable in UNIX type operating system use env command and look for PATH variable in ENVIRONMENT variables list or use bash line: echo $PATH this will return only $PATH variable.
For example my PATH variable is:
/Users/david/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
When you will try to launch a program by writing it's name in console all those directories you see in PATH variable will be checked for that application.
Utilities are external programs - they reside in various directories. To enable them, make sure the directory path is in your $PATH variable so it can find them. Likewise, to disable them make sure the directory path is not in your $PATH variable for the shell.
The shell interpreter uses the PATH or path variable to determine which directories to look in. It will look for an executable file with the same name as the command.
The PATH variable is a list of directories separated by colon (:). The shell searches through these directories whenever it needs to find a command.You can you printenv command to display the PATHvariable$ printenv PATH/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/gamesTo add a new path into the PATH variable$ PATH=$PATH:Example$ PATH=$PATH:/test/programs$ printenv PATH/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/test/programs
Absolute path: Path from root directory (it is the same place, wherever the current path is) Relative path: Relative to the current path.
The path (or PATH) variable is a shell environment variable. It describes to the shell which directories should be searched for executable files/programs. The system does not search every directory to find a program; only those directories indicated in the PATH shell environment variable. The same thing is true for Windows.
The PATH environment variable is the default search path(s) for when an explicit path is not provided and the file requested is not in the current directory.
You export a variable in one process so that a child process can have the value as well. If you don't export the variable then the child process cannot see it.
The Unix pathname format uses the forward slash (/) to separate the component parts of the path.
Use the following: PS1='$PWD : '
execlp() is a system call on UNIX systems (within the "exec" family of system calls declared in unistd.h) that loads an executable and begins executing it within the current process. execlp() is unique from other "exec" calls in that PATH environment variable is searched (so you need not provide the full path of the executable) and the command line arguments are passed in using variable size argument list (... in C) as opposed to an array of arguments.
The HOME environment variable has this information.
Not exactly clean what do you mean.1. Which directory are you in: pwd2. Your PATH environment variable: echo $PATH