[ruby] How to modify PATH for Homebrew?

Trying to install ruby 1.9.3, read that I need to install homebrew first. Ran brew doctor, and it's giving me a bunch of warnings. One of which is:

Warning: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin This means that system-provided programs will be used instead of those provided by Homebrew. The following tools exist at both paths:

easy_install
easy_install-2.6

Consider amending your PATH so that /usr/local/bin is ahead of /usr/bin in your PATH.

How does one do what it's asking here?

open bash profile in textEdit

open -e .bash_profile

Edit file or paste in front of PATH export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin

save & close the file

*To open .bash_profile directly open textEdit > file > recent

To avoid unnecessary duplication, I added the following to my ~/.bash_profile

case ":$PATH:" in
  *:/usr/local/bin:*) ;;     # do nothing if $PATH already contains /usr/local/bin
  *) PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH ;;  # in every other case, add it to the front
esac

Credit: https://superuser.com/a/580611

Just run the following line in your favorite terminal application:

echo export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH" >> ~/.bash_profile

Restart your terminal and run

brew doctor

the issue should be resolved

There are many ways to update your path. Jun1st answer works great. Another method is to augment your .bash_profile to have:

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:~/bin:$PATH"

The line above places /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin in front of your $PATH. Once you source your .bash_profile or start a new terminal you can verify your path by echo'ing it out.

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/Users/<your account>/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

Once satisfied with the result running $ brew doctor again should no longer produce your error.

This blog post helped me out in resolving issues I ran into. http://moncefbelyamani.com/how-to-install-xcode-homebrew-git-rvm-ruby-on-mac/