| Your PATH variable contains all the directories that will be searched for a command. They are searched in the order given so, if you add a directory at the front, it will be searched first and the commands in it will override any commands with the same name in other directories.
The first line of the code you quote is supposed to carry out this operation but it looks a bit wonky to me. The > prompt that you are getting indicates that bash thinks you haven't finished the command and that is usually due to unpaired quotes or brackets, in this case (I think) an unpaired brace {.
Try "export PATH = /jb/java/bin :$PATH" instead. That means: take all the directories in PATH (they will be separated by colons), put "/jb/java/bin:" in front, make that list the new PATH and export it (make it available to all scripts and programs). Just for interest, you can try displaying the old and the new versions of $PATH like this:
echo $PATH
export PATH = /jb/java/bin:$PATH
echo $PATH
I think that will show you what you have done better than I could explain it.
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"I'm just a little old lady; don't try to dazzle me with jargon!"
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