Background
Understanding PATH
When you run a command like python
or pip
, your operating system searches through a list of directories to find an executable file with that name. This list of directories lives in an environment variable called PATH
, with each directory in the list separated by a colon:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
Directories in PATH
are searched from left to right, so a matching executable in a directory at the beginning of the list takes precedence over another one at the end. In this example, the /usr/local/bin
directory will be searched first, then /usr/bin
, then /bin
.