How can I set all subdirectories of a directory into $PATH?

Question

It looks like when adding a directory into $PATH, its subdirectories are not added recursively. So can I do that? Or is there a reason why this is not supported?

Answer 1

Add them recursively using find like so:

PATH=$PATH$( find $HOME/scripts/ -type d -printf ":%p" )

WARNING: As mentioned in the comments to the question this isn't encouraged as it poses a security risk because there is no guarantee that executable files in the directories added aren't malicious.

It's probably a better solution to follow Gilles' answer and use stow

Answer 2

The usual unix directory structure has application files sorted into directories by kind: bin for executables, lib for libraries, doc for documentation and so on. That's when they are installed in separate directories; often applications are grouped into a few directories (hence many systems have just three directories in $PATH: /usr/local/bin, /usr/bin and /bin). It is rare to have both executable files and subdirectories inside a directory, so there's no demand for including a directory's subdirectories in $PATH.

What might occasionally be useful is to include all the bin subdirectories of subdirectories of a given directory in $PATH:

for d in /opt/*/bin; do PATH="$PATH:$d"; done

However, this is rarely done. The usual method when executables in non-standard directories are to be in $PATH is to make symbolic links in a directory in the path such as /usr/local/bin. The stow utility (or xstow) can be useful in that regard.