Translations:Session Environment Variables/5/en

Let's explore that. The command export tells the system that this is something that should be saved and used when looking for files. Next you add the full name of the directory you want to add (in this case ~/local/bin, another way of writing /home/you/local/bin - again you can use echo $HOME to see how that works). Finally you see the $PATH variable itself - that's because you want to add your new path into it, not replace the existing path.