Problems with the PATH

Disclaimer: This post is highly technical, so it might be a bit boring for many people :-)

Today I was trying to install android SDK on my linux, and while doing so I had to modify the PATH, and I totally screwed it, so I'll write here the hints to modify it correctly.

First of all: Your path will contain some entries: I'M TOTALLY SURE. In case you are not type "echo $PATH" on the console. See? In my case I get:
echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

I thought my PATH contained no entries so I directly entered: "export PATH=/home/nest0r/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools". You SHOULDN'T DO this. I repeat: DON'T DO IT. If you do it you PATH will miss all the entries it had, so you'll only have this:
echo $PATH
/home/nest0r/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools

And you don't want this because in this case you'll have to type /usr/bin/gedit to get gedit running, and so on. So please don't screw it as I did. In case you already screwed it, please enter this command to become happy again:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

Now you have your system as it was (at least it now works well).

In order to add a new entry to the path (in my case it's "android-sdk-linux_x86/tools")
export PATH=$PATH:/home/nest0r/android-sdk-linux_x86/tools
Please, pay attention to this part PATH=$PATH This way you can be sure that you'll keep the former path you had.

I hope this helps someone!


Image taken from: 4_ever_young