Software uninstalled from brew still on $PATH

homebrewpathterminal

I've uninstalled software from brew (as I want to use a different version), using MacOS High Sierra 10.13.1

brew uninstall bowtie2

And downloaded the software from SourceForge instead, then copied the executables onto the $PATH

which bowtie2

> /usr/local/bin/bowtie2

However when I try to run the command

bowtie2

I get the error

> -bash: /usr/local/Homebrew/bin/bowtie2: No such file or directory

So it's still searching for the old path in the Homebrew folder. How do I change this?

Best Answer

Homebrew likes to create symlinks from /usr/local/bin/ to /usr/local/Cellar/.

You can see if this is the case by running: ls -l /usr/local/bin/bowtie2.

That should return a line with arrow syntax (->) like this:

/usr/local/bin/bowtie2 -> ../Cellar/bowtie2/<someversion>/bin/bowtie2

If that's the case, then you can just delete the broken symlink with: rm /usr/local/bin/bowtie2 (you may need to preface that with sudo depending on ownership of /usr/local/bin/. It's the broken symlink that is causing which to still show bowtie2 as being located in /usr/local/bin/.

You can then move the new binary for bowtie (that you downloaded from SourceForge) into /usr/local/bin/ or any other folder in your PATH.

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