Make 'echo %PATH' More Readable

Nov 18, 2017

When you want to check the contents of your $PATH variable. To see which directories are in your session, you run the command:

$ echo $PATH

Output:

/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/opt:/usr/local/go/bin:/usr/local/texlive/2015basic/bin/x86_64-darwin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:/usr/local/sbin:/opt:/usr/local/go/bin:/usr/local/texlive/2015basic/bin/x86_64-darwin

This is all well and good, but the output of the command can be hard to read if you have many directories in your path. What you want is a command that outputs the $PATH variable in an easier to read format. Luckily, this can accomplished with a little bit of bash code:

path()
{
    p=$PATH;
    OIFS="$IFS";
    IFS=':';
    read -a paths <<< "${p}";
    IFS="$OIFS";
    for i in "${paths[@]}";
    do
        echo "- $i";
    done
}

Now if we run:

$ path

Output:

- /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin
- /usr/local/bin
- /usr/local/sbin
- /usr/local/go/bin
- /usr/local/texlive/2015basic/bin/x86_64-darwin
- /usr/local/bin
- /usr/bin
- /bin
- /usr/sbin
- /sbin
- /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin
- /usr/local/sbin
- /opt
- /usr/local/go/bin
- /usr/local/texlive/2015basic/bin/x86_64-darwin

This is much easier to read. And better, it still displays the original search order of the directories.

Fin.