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The version of vim on my computer is kind of old (6.2), so I installed MacVim (7.3). It comes with a shell script you can put somewhere to start MacVim from the terminal. The documentation says to "put this script in a folder in your path", and noob that I am, I'm trying to figure out what this means. I've searched and read, but I'm still lost as to what I need to do. Also, I'm running Tiger on a ppc mac, so Homebrew is unfortunately not an option.

Please help a noob!

ivan
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1 Answers1

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The 'path' refers to a list of directories that are searched by the operating system to find executables. On the Mac, in the terminal, you can see this by typing: echo $PATH

If you place that script in any of those directories, you should be able to run that script.

Kenrick Chien
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  • Ahh, I see. Does the order of the list matter? – ivan Oct 05 '12 at 03:52
  • ...or rather, is there one location that makes more sense than others? I have `/bin`, `/sbin`, `/usr/bin`, and `/usr/sbin` – ivan Oct 05 '12 at 03:58
  • The order matters. The list is searched from the first directory and stops when it encounters the first match. So, if the script does not exist in any of the directories, you won't be able to run it. Normally, you don't want to modify those directories since those are in everyone's PATH and owned by the "root" (god-like) user. (I.e., if you type `ls -ld /bin`, you might see `root` next to the directory name.) If you're the only user of your system, it might be okay (some people are against this) to put it in `/usr/bin`. – Kenrick Chien Oct 05 '12 at 15:03
  • I added `/usr/local/bin` to my PATH and put it there. Thanks for your help! – ivan Oct 05 '12 at 20:49