Path-diag

A utility for validating paths in environment variables and modifying them safely.

Prerequisites

• Python 3

Installation

You can install path-diag via pip:

pip3 install path-diag

Usage

Diagnose environment variable problems

Check if $PATH contains any invalid paths:

$ pathdiag

$PATH is the default variable to check.

You can specify another variable. For example:

$ pathdiag --var PYTHONPATH

You can also specify an increased verbosity which will also print the paths that are successfully checked:

$ pathdiag -v
✓ /usr/local/bin
✓ /usr/bin
✓ /bin
✓ /usr/sbin
✓ /sbin

Safely append/prepend paths to environment variables

You can use the bash functions in order to take advantage of this features by adding the following line on top of your .bashrc/.zshrc file:

source /usr/local/bin/path-diag-functions.sh

Then you can use the safe_append/safe_prepend functions. For example:

safe_append "/usr/local/Cellar/node/7.4.0/bin"
safe_prepend "/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin"

This will add /usr/local/Cellar/node/7.4.0/bin at the end of $PATH if this path passes the validation checks, and will also add /usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin at the beginning of $PATH, again if no errors are identified.

Contributing

All contributions are welcomed. Make sure your code passes flake8 checks and that is auto-formatted using black