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.

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.

Answer 2

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"

Answer 3

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/openssl@1.1/include -I/opt/homebrew/opt/zlib/include”

is wrong and needs to be:

export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/homebrew/opt/openssl@1.1/include -I/opt/homebrew/opt/zlib/include"