[bash] Shell script not running, command not found

Unix has a variable called PATH that is a list of directories where to find commands.

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/Users/david/bin

If I type a command foo at the command line, my shell will first see if there's an executable command /usr/local/bin/foo. If there is, it will execute /usr/local/bin/foo. If not, it will see if there's an executable command /usr/bin/foo and if not there, it will look to see if /bin/foo exists, etc. until it gets to /Users/david/bin/foo.

If it can't find a command foo in any of those directories, it tell me command not found.

There are several ways I can handle this issue:

  • Use the commandbash foo since foo is a shell script.
  • Include the directory name when you eecute the command like /Users/david/foo or $PWD/foo or just plain ./foo.
  • Change your $PATH variable to add the directory that contains your commands to the PATH.

You can modify $HOME/.bash_profile or $HOME/.profile if .bash_profile doesn't exist. I did that to add in /usr/local/bin which I placed first in my path. This way, I can override the standard commands that are in the OS. For example, I have Ant 1.9.1, but the Mac came with Ant 1.8.4. I put my ant command in /usr/local/bin, so my version of antwill execute first. I also added $HOME/bin to the end of the PATH for my own commands. If I had a file like the one you want to execute, I'll place it in $HOME/bin to execute it.

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