PATH variable in .zshenv or .zshrc

Question

My setup is zsh 5.0.5 in arch linux

I have set the PATH variable as below in .zshenv

typeset -U path
path=(~/bin $path)
DW=$HOME/Downloads

but it didn't work. print $PATH shows only

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/vendor_perl:/usr/bin/core_perl

.zshenv was read, because I could see DW variable is set. Only PATH variable isn't set. And what I don't understand is, after rename the .zshenv to .zshrc, PATH variable just works as intended.

Need any special treatment setting environment variables in .zshenv?

Answer 1

I just encountered this problem myself, and the real answer is that Zsh on Arch sources /etc/profile – which overwrites and exports PATH – after having sourced ~/.zshenv.

See: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zsh#Configuration_files