How to break a long line in .bash_profile

Question

I have a very long line in my .bash_profile, as below:

export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda/lib:$HOME/anaconda2/lib:/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib:/opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib:/opt/intel/mkl/lib:$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH

How do I break this line into multiple lines?

Also, is .bash_profile considered a shell script? If not, what exactly is it categorized as? If I know this, I will be able to look up general formatting guide for this file.

Answer 1

DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/intel/mkl/lib:$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH"
DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib:$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH"
DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib:$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH"
DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/cuda/lib:$HOME/anaconda2/lib:$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH"
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH

Or, with an array and string concatenation:

paths=(
    /usr/local/cuda/lib
    "$HOME/anaconda2/lib"
    /usr/local/lib
    /usr/lib
    /opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib
    /opt/intel/mkl/lib
    ${DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH:+"$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH"}
)

IFS=:$IFS
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="${paths[*]}"
IFS=${IFS#?}

That last item in the array will expand to the value of the DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH variable, or nothing if it's not set or is empty.

The expansion of "${paths[*]}" will be the paths joined into a single string delimited by the first character of the IFS variable, which we temporarily set to :.

Answer 2

You can do this using the line break character: \. Also you should declare and export on two different lines so:

DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda/lib:\
$HOME/anaconda2/lib:\
/usr/local/lib:/usr/lib:\
/opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib:\
/opt/intel/mkl/lib:\
$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH

Your bash profile is a config file and a script of sorts.

Answer 3

Since it's Bash, you can append to a string (var+=value). Though you pretty much need a temporary variable here, since you're prefixing the paths to the original value.

tmp=/usr/local/cuda/lib
tmp+=:$HOME/anaconda2/lib
tmp+=:/usr/local/lib
tmp+=:/usr/lib
tmp+=:/opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib
tmp+=:/opt/intel/mkl/lib
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=$tmp:$DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH
unset tmp

Note that like your original snippet, this assumes that DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH is not empty in the beginning. If it is, this'd leave a trailing : in it.

---

Alternatively, if your paths don't contain whitespace just put the string in quotes, and remove the whitespace afterwards:

export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/cuda/lib:
   $HOME/anaconda2/lib:
   /usr/local/lib:/usr/lib:
   /opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib:
   /opt/intel/mkl/lib:
   $DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH"
DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=${DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH//[[:space:]]}

---

This is a bit silly:

prepend() { declare -n _n=$1; _n="$2$_n"; }
prepend DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH /opt/intel/mkl/lib:
prepend DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH /opt/intel/compilers_and_libraries/mac/lib:
prepend DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/lib:
prepend DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib:
prepend DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH "$HOME/anaconda2/lib:"
prepend DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/cuda/lib:
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH

Answer 4

I use Stephen Collyer's bash_path_funcs, described in Linux Journal way back in 2000:

https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3645 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3768 https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3935

The addpath function adds an entry to a path only if it is not there in the first place. delpath -n deletes all non-existent directories from a path.

You can get the pathfunc.tgz file from https://web.archive.org/web/20061210054813/http://www.netspinner.co.uk:80/Downloads/pathfunc.tgz