PATH='/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/3.6/bin:$' bash_profile currently looks like this: # Setting PATH for Python 3.6 You’ll notice that their respective orders are opposite from each other.Įnter the following command to open the bash profile in TextEdit: $ open ~/.bash_profile If that was confusing compare the order that the python paths are added to my bash profile below to the PATH listed above. Entering python3 in bash will call python 3.6, not 3.7. This means that if you have Python 3.6 installed on your computer, and then decide to add python 3.7, but keep 3.6, the installer will add Python 3.7 to the top of the bash profile but it will end up after python 3.6 in the PATH. This means that the last path at the bottom of the bash profile will end up as the first path in the PATH. When anaconda, miniconda or other versions of python are installed they automatically add paths to their respective versions of python to the top of the bash profile.īash reads the bash profile in sequential order - from top to bottom - and adds those paths to the PATH in the order that they’re read. You can add a variety of preferences to the bash profile, including modifications to the PATH. The bash profile is a set of instructions that are run by the shell when the user logs in to bash. When the shell finds that command, it stops and calls it even if there is another version of the same command, with the same name, further down in the list.

When you ask your shell to run a particular command or run an interpreter, python for example, the shell looks through the different directories listed in the PATH in order they’re presented above.

/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/3.6/bin.

/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/2.7/bin.

/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/3.7/bin.

The directories above are separated by a colon, this is what they look like displayed in sequence: Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/3.7/bin:/Users/username/anaconda3/bin:/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/2.7/bin:/Users/username/miniconda2/bin:/Users/username/miniconda3/bin:/Library/Frameworks/amework/Versions/3.6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin You can display the path on your computer using the echo $PATH command: $ echo $PATH The path is a list of directories that your shell will look through when you execute a command.

Install python with brew