zsh error: export:54: not valid in this context:

Question

While messing around with zsh today and getting something configured properly for ruby, I got the following error.

/Users/secallahan/.zshrc:export:54: not valid in this context: /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/texbin

Here is my .zshrc (around line 54, where the error occurs) file that I edited.

# Path to your oh-my-zsh configuration.
ZSH=$HOME/.oh-my-zsh

....
....

# User configuration

export $PATH=/Users/secallahan/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/bin:/Users/secallahan/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1@global/bin:/Users/secallahan/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.1/bin:/Users/secallahan/.rvm/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/texbin
# export MANPATH="/usr/local/man:$MANPATH"

This was the only way I was able to make it. So then I opened a new shell and did ruby -v and got ruby2.1.1 as the current version.

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Deplane

FYI, you don't need to use export when updating PATH, since PATH will universally have the export flag set already. export is only needed when marking a variable for export which didn't have the flag previously set. – Kiowa

Answer 1

When defining or exporting a variable, you should not use $:

export PATH=/Users...

Otherwise, the current value of PATH will be substituted into the export statement.

Whalebone

Ahh that makes sense. That worked perfectly, thanks! Just to spin off another question form that, what exactly does the $ do? – Deplane

it means "use the variable's value"... e.g. echo PATH outputs the word "PATH", echo $PATH outputs the value of the PATH variable. – Whalebone

Answer 2

This can also be caused by using pasted incorrect double quotes for your value To fix it delete your double quotes and type them in terminal

For example:

export CPPFLAGS=“-I/opt/homebrew/opt/[email protected]/include -I/opt/homebrew/opt/zlib/include”

is wrong and needs to be:

export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/opt/[email protected]/include -I/opt/homebrew/opt/zlib/include"

Stationer

Answer 3

You left out the double quotes too. This was my case, I had to change the syntax from

export PATH=/usr/local/opt/node@12/bin/  to

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/node@12/bin:$PATH"

Disaccord

Answer 4

This happened to me when I ran source .env command. The reason was space between double quotes and equals to.

export API_KEY= "#####"

Fixed it by removing space.

export API_KEY="#####"

Isocline