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

This is a brute force approach but it works in all cases except when a path entry contains a colon. And no programs other than the shell are used.

previous_IFS=$IFS
dir_in_path='no'
export IFS=":"
for p in $PATH
do
  [ "$p" = "/path/to/check" ] && dir_in_path='yes'
done

[ "$dir_in_path" = "no" ] && export PATH="$PATH:/path/to/check"
export IFS=$previous_IFS