Detect if user's path has a specific directory in it

Question

With /bin/bash, how would I detect if a user has a specific directory in their $PATH variable?

For example

if [ -p \"$HOME/bin\" ]; then         


        

Answer 1

There is absolutely no need to use external utilities like grep for this. Here is what I have been using, which should be portable back to even legacy versions of the Bourne shell.

case :$PATH: # notice colons around the value
  in *:$HOME/bin:*) ;; # do nothing, it's there
     *) echo "$HOME/bin not in $PATH" >&2;;
esac