Cant open and edit .bash_profile on my Mac

Question

I want to build an app with Eclipse and PhoneGap, and it is required to edit the .bash_profile file which is located under the Users folder. But I can't edit it (I can't open the file). Here are the instructions.

I can't open it when I navigate with the Finder to that file, and I can't open it when I use the command line

open ~/.bash_profile

I created the file with my mouse (right click, new file, and changed the name to .bash_profile ... it is now a shell script).

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You are not doing anything wrong, files starting with a dot (.) are hidden, simply edit the file, and everything is okay.

So you can for example do nano ~/.bash_profile or vim ~/.bash_profile or whichever favorite editor you are using.

Answer 2

You can see your ~/.bash_profile if you start the Terminal application and type:

ls -a

into the Terminal window, since the "-a" option shows even hidden files.