dumb question

[John Ralls]

> On Mar 12, 2015, at 2:57 AM, David Christopher <chrstdvd at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> How do I change the path the guile looks for my .scm files.  Rigjht now it
> looks in /home/david  but I put my dinky little "newbee" files in
> /home/david/Documents.
> 
> I tried "PATH=$PATH:$HOME/Documents" and "PATH=$PATH:$HOME/david/Documents"
> from the terminal while in /home/david .
> 
> That does not work from the terminal or within in guile.
> 
> I do not understand instructions given to me to edit /home/david/.profile


https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Environment-Variables.html describes the environment variables Guile looks at. $PATH is used by the shell (as in bash) to find executables which are named without specifying a path. E.g., a command "gcc" will make the shell search $PATH for the first executable file named "gcc" while "/usr/local/bin/gcc" will try to execute that file and that file only. As you'll see from Environment-Variables.html, Guile doesn't use $PATH.

Read bash(1) (which means to run the command `man bash` and read the resulting manual page) to learn about .profile and other shell-configuration files. Since you're apparently new to Unix/Linux you might want to get a basic Unix book. The "for Dummies" series is generally pretty good in spite of the demeaning titles.

Regards,
John Ralls