source .bash_profile permission denied

Question

Mac Os Mavericks

added bin folder to home

added to .bash_profile this:

export PATH=$PATH;$HOME/bin

changed owner of .bash_profile to me (paul)

source ~/.bash_profile generates

/Users/paul/.bash_profile:4: permission denied: /Users/paul/bin

ls -la $HOME/bin is

 drwxr-xr-x   2 paul  staff    68 Aug 31 08:58 .
 drwxr-xr-x+ 55 paul  staff  1870 Aug 31 09:33 ..

What am I missing?

Answer 1

When you write

export PATH=$PATH;$HOME/bin

you actually have two commands export PATH=$PATH (that basically does nothing), and then $HOME/bin , which is expanded to /Users/paul/bin , and causes an error since you cannot execute a directory.

It should probably be

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
 #               ^
 #               + -------- colon (:) instead of semicolon (;)