Remove redundant paths from $PATH variable

Question

I have defined the same path in the $PATH variable 6 times.

I wasn't logging out to check whether it worked.

How can I remove the duplicates?

The $PATH variable looks like this:

echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/home/flacs/Programmes/USFOS/bin:/home/flacs/Programmes/USFOS/bin:/home/flacs/Programmes/USFOS/bin:/home/flacs/Programmes/USFOS/bin:/home/flacs/Programmes/USFOS/bin:/home/flacs/Programmes/USFOS/bin

How would I reset it to just

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

Answer 1

You just execute:

export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

that would be for the current session, if you want to change permanently add it to any .bashrc, bash.bashrc, /etc/profile - whatever fits your system and user needs.

Answer 2

If you're using Bash, you can also do the following if, let's say, you want to remove the directory /home/wrong/dir/ from your PATH variable:

PATH=`echo $PATH | sed -e 's/:\/home\/wrong\/dir\/$//'`

Answer 3

If you need to remove a path from the PATH variable before your script runs add this to the beginning of the script:

PATH=$(echo $PATH | sed -e 's;:\?/home/user/bin;;' -e 's;/home/user/bin:\?;;')

If you need, you can re-add it at the front of the list with:

PATH=/home/user/bin:$PATH

Or you can re-add it at the end of the list with:

PATH=$PATH:/home/user/bin

Answer 4

Linux: Remove redundant paths from $PATH variable

Linux From Scratch has this function in /etc/profile

# Functions to help us manage paths.  Second argument is the name of the
# path variable to be modified (default: PATH)
pathremove () {
        local IFS=':'
        local NEWPATH
        local DIR
        local PATHVARIABLE=${2:-PATH}
        for DIR in ${!PATHVARIABLE} ; do
                if [ "$DIR" != "$1" ] ; then
                  NEWPATH=${NEWPATH:+$NEWPATH:}$DIR
                fi
        done
        export $PATHVARIABLE="$NEWPATH"
}

This is intended to be used with these functions for adding to the path, so that you don't do it redundantly:

pathprepend () {
        pathremove $1 $2
        local PATHVARIABLE=${2:-PATH}
        export $PATHVARIABLE="$1${!PATHVARIABLE:+:${!PATHVARIABLE}}"
}

pathappend () {
        pathremove $1 $2
        local PATHVARIABLE=${2:-PATH}
        export $PATHVARIABLE="${!PATHVARIABLE:+${!PATHVARIABLE}:}$1"
}

Simple usage is to just give pathremove the directory path to remove - but keep in mind that it has to match exactly:

$ pathremove /home/username/anaconda3/bin

This will remove each instance of that directory from your path.

If you want the directory in your path, but without the redundancies, you could just use one of the other functions, e.g. - for your specific case:

$ pathprepend /usr/local/sbin
$ pathappend /usr/local/bin
$ pathappend /usr/sbin
$ pathappend /usr/bin
$ pathappend /sbin
$ pathappend /bin
$ pathappend /usr/games

But, unless readability is the concern, at this point you're better off just doing:

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

Would the above work in all shells known to man?

I would presume the above to work in sh, dash, and bash at least. I would be surprised to learn it doesn't work in csh, fish', orksh`. I doubt it would work in Windows command shell or Powershell.

If you have Python, the following sort of command should do what is directly asked (that is, remove redundant paths):

$ PATH=$( python -c "
import os
path = os.environ['PATH'].split(':')
print(':'.join(sorted(set(path), key=path.index)))
" )

A one-liner (to sidestep multiline issues):

$ PATH=$( python -c "import os; path = os.environ['PATH'].split(':'); print(':'.join(sorted(set(path), key=path.index)))" )

The above removes later redundant paths. To remove earlier redundant paths, use a reversed list's index and reverse it again:

$ PATH=$( python -c "
import os
path = os.environ['PATH'].split(':')[::-1]
print(':'.join(sorted(set(path), key=path.index, reverse=True)))
" )

Answer 5

Here is a one line code that cleans up the PATH

• It does not disturb the order of the PATH, just removes duplicates
• Treats : and empth PATH gracefully
• No special characters used, so does not require escape

• Uses /bin/awk so it works even when PATH is broken

  export PATH="$(echo "$PATH" |/bin/awk 'BEGIN{RS=":";}
  {sub(sprintf("%c$",10),"");if(A[$0]){}else{A[$0]=1;
  printf(((NR==1)?"":":")$0)}}')";
  

Answer 6

In bash you simply can ${var/find/replace}

PATH=${PATH/%:\/home\/wrong\/dir\//}

Or in this case (as the replace bit is empty) just:

PATH=${PATH%:\/home\/wrong\/dir\/}

I came here first but went else ware as I thought there would be a parameter expansion to do this. Easier than sed!.

How to replace placeholder character or word in variable with value from another variable in Bash?

Answer 7

If you just want to remove any duplicate paths, I use this script I wrote a while back since I was having trouble with multiple perl5/bin paths:

#!/bin/bash
#
# path-cleanup
#
# This must be run as "source path-cleanup" or ". path-cleanup"
# so the current shell gets the changes.

pathlist=`echo $PATH | sed 's/:/\n/g' | uniq`

# echo "Starting PATH: $PATH"
# echo "pathlist: $pathlist"
unset PATH
# echo "After unset, PATH: $PATH"
for dir in $pathlist
do
    if test -d $dir ; then
        if test -z $PATH; then
            PATH=$dir
        else
            PATH=$PATH:$dir
        fi
    fi
done
export PATH
# echo "After loop, PATH: $PATH"

And I put it in my ~/.profile at the end. Since I use BASH almost exclusively, I haven't tried it in other shells.

Answer 8

For an easy copy-paste template I use this Perl snippet:

PATH=`echo $PATH | perl -pe s:/path/to/be/excluded::`

This way you don't need to escape the slashes for the substitute operator.

Answer 9

1. Just echo $PATH
2. copy details into a text editor
3. remove unwanted entries
4. PATH= # pass new list of entries

Answer 10

Assuming your shell is Bash, you can set the path with

export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

but like Levon said in another answer, as soon as you terminate the shell the changes will be gone. You probably want to set up your PATH in ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc.

Answer 11

There are no standard tools to "edit" the value of $PATH (i.e. "add folder only when it doesn't already exists" or "remove this folder").

To check what the path would be when you login next time, use telnet localhost (or telnet 127.0.0.1). It will then ask for your username and password.

This gives you a new login shell (i.e. a completely new one that doesn't inherit anything from the current environment).

You can check the value of the $PATH there and edit your rc files until it is correct. This is also useful to see whether you could login again at all after making a change to an important file.

Answer 12

How did you add these duplicate paths to your PATH variable? You must have edited one of your . files. (.tcshrc, or .bashrc, etc depending on your particular system/shell). The way to fix it is to edit the file again and remove the duplicate paths.

If you didn't edit any files, and you you must have modified the PATH interactively. In that case the changes won't "stick", ie if you open another shell, or log out and log back in, the changes will be gone automatically.

Note that there are some system wide config files too, but it's unlikely you modified those, so most likely you'll be changing files in your personal home directory (if you want to make those changes permanent once you settle on a set of paths)