Bash – How to Rehash Executables in $PATH

bash

The subject says it all, how to rehash the available executables available within one of the $PATHs after having changed things: e.g. removed a binary from one $PATH which is available in another $PATH, changed the $PATH-variable.

Best Answer

hash -r is what needs to be done. In zsh it is rehash and rehash doesn't exist (by default) in bash.

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MacOS – Mac OS X 10.6 executable not found without full path

Simple. The current directory never belongs to the PATH. For this reason, even if you're inside /opt/local/apache2/bin, you cannot simply type httpd because Bash will only look in your PATH.

So, therefore you would have to type ./httpd here.

To get Bash to look for executables in the MacPorts Apache directory, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:

export PATH=/opt/local/apache2/bin:$PATH

This will also result in binaries from that directory taking precedence over any other binaries with the same name that might come later in the PATH—check this with which -a httpd.

When to rehash executables in $PATH with bash

hash is a bash built-in command. The hash table is a feature of bash that prevents it from having to search $PATH every time you type a command by caching the results in memory.

So when the cached/stored information are not anymore updated or valid you may need to reset it.

Read more on this nice answer on Unix stackexchange.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacOS – Mac OS X 10.6 executable not found without full path

When to rehash executables in $PATH with bash

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