permanently remove directory from python path

python macos command-line pythonpath
Ryan Saxe picture Ryan Saxe · Oct 8, 2013 · Viewed 29.7k times · Source

I recently added some things to my python path that I don't want there using:

export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:/my/path

You can use sys.path.remove to remove something in the path, but it's not 100% permanent like the way I added it with the command line statement above.

what can I do to permanently remove directories from the python path?

Answer

Zack Su picture Zack Su · Aug 28, 2014

If you simply delete the line "export PYTHONPATH=..." in .bashrc and do "source .bashrc", those directories would still be in sys.path.

Unlike "export PATH" in .bashrc, it seems that when you export some directories into PYTHONPATH, they are dump into some file which python can always check.

So, what you need to do is "export PYTHONPATH=" (export empty string) and do "source .bashrc". This will clean up everything you have export into PYTHONPATH before in .bashrc.

Related questions

How do I install pip on macOS or OS X?

I spent most of the day yesterday searching for a clear answer for installing pip (package manager for Python). I can't find a good solution. How do I install it?

Read More
bash: pip: command not found

I downloaded pip and ran python setup.py install and everything worked just fine. The very next step in the tutorial is to run pip install <lib you want> but before it even tries to find anything online …

Read More
How to uninstall Python 2.7 on a Mac OS X 10.6.4?

I want to completely remove Python 2.7 from my Mac OS X 10.6.4. I managed to remove the entry from the PATH variable by reverting my .bash_profile. But I also want to remove all directories, files, symlinks, and entries that got …

Read More