appending a path to PATH variable permanently

[sachinjnumca]

how to add a path to PATH variable permanently so that it remains persisent even after closing shell and rebooting the system
when i added a path, to variable it remained there as long as i didn't closed the shell...........
but when i reopened it ,changed were undone...........

[Rubberman]

Typically this is done in your ~/.bash_profile. For example, in mine I have this PATH setting:

export PATH=$HOME/bin:$HOME/bin/chrome:${ORACLE_HOME}/bin:${PATH}

Note that I embed PATH in ${} symbols so it will properly handle the recursive definintion of PATH.

[Rubberman]

Also, if you want to modify the PATH for all users, then you can edit the script /etc/profile.