6: The PATH Variable（Working with programs）

In the last screen, we typed

/usr/bin/python

to access the Python interpreter. If the Python interpreter is at that location, how come we can also access it by typing

python

? We can do this because of the

PATH

variable. The

PATH

environment variable contains several folders. Any program in any one of these folders can be run simply by typing the name of the program. Since

/usr/bin

is one of the folders in

PATH

, we can access

python

, which is in the folder, by just typing

python

instead of the full path.

Instructions

Type

echo $PATH

to see what folders are in

PATH

.

/home/dq$ echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin