what is an environment variable?

[Amedee Van Gasse]

                   On 16/03/2012 23:03, Thufir Hawat wrote:
I've looked at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables
and  some other resources, but it's still unclear to me
*what* $PATH is.   There's no corresponding file, just
various files which add to the this  variable.  (It's a
shell variable?)

 It's something that onlylives in memory.


            How do you see all the files which effect $PATH?  You just
have to go  through ~/.bash* and ~/.profile* and such, as well
as /etc/evironment?          Short answer: yes.
            Once something is added to $PATH, how do you remove it?


You don't.
You change $PATH to something new that doesn't include whatever you wanted
to remove.