tidypath

tidypath cleans up PATH and PATH-like strings by removing duplicates and normalizing empty fragments. Add the following, or its equivalent, to the bottom of the appropriate startup script (e.g., ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile) for your shell:

hash tidypath && export PATH="`tidypath`"

Installation

If you use the Homebrew package manager on macOS, you can add the tidypath tap and install directly:

$ brew tap jneu/tidypath
$ brew install tidypath

tidypath uses the GNU build system. To build directly from the github source, you'll need Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool. Execute the following:

$ git clone https://github.com/jneu/tidypath.git
$ cd tidypath
$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ sudo make install

If you received tidypath as a tarball, you don't need the GNU build tools. Instead, execute the following:

$ tar xzf tidypath-0.1.1.tar.gz    # Your version may be different
$ cd tidypath-0.1.1
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make check
$ sudo make install

Standard configure options are supported. E.g, to install tidypath in a specific directory, use something like:

$ configure --prefix=/home/your_user_name/local

By default, tidypath does not free any internally allocated memory as it's not necessary to do so and slows down program execution. When developing or troubleshooting, it's useful to change this behavior. To insure all memory is deallocated, use:

$ configure --enable-free

Usage

PATH variables are notorious for becoming large and unwieldy. tidypath cleans up PATH and PATH-like strings by removing duplicate entries and changing all empty fragments into .. Typical usage would be to add something like the following to the appropriate shell startup script:

hash tidypath && export PATH="`tidypath`"

Other examples:

$ export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin:
$ tidypath
/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:. # No newline
$ tidypath "$PATH"             # Equivalent to the above
$ tidypath --env PATH          # Equivalent to the above
$ tidypath --env CLASSPATH     # Operate on $CLASSPATH instead
$ tidypath --aggressive        # _Really_ clean up $PATH

tidypath supports command line options:

tidypath [options] [pathlike_string (defaults to $PATH)]
    -a, --aggressive          also prune absolute fragments that match previous
                              inodes, do not exist, or are not directories
    -d, --delimiter <char>    specify the delimiter to use; defaults to :
    -e, --env                 the first argument will specify the name of an
                              environment variable to use
    -h, --help                show this help message and exit
    -i, --ignore-empty        prune empty fragments
    -n, --nop                 do not prune any fragments for any reason
    -p, --pretty              print each fragment separated by a newline
    -V, --version             show the version of tidypath and exit