Remove a path from the PATH environment variable

To remove a PATH from a PATH environment variable, you need to edit ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile or /etc/profile or ~/.profile or /etc/bash.bashrc (distro specific) file and remove the assignment for that particular path.

Instead of finding the exact assignment, you could just do a replacement in the $PATH in its final stage.

The following will safely remove $path from $PATH:

path=~/bin
PATH="$(echo "$PATH" |sed -e "s#\(^\|:\)$(echo "$path" |sed -e 's/[^^]/[&]/g' -e 's/\^/\\^/g')\(:\|/\{0,1\}$\)#\1\2#" -e 's#:\+#:#g' -e 's#^:\|:$##g')"

To make it permanent, you will need to add it at the end of your bash configuration file.

You can do it in a functional way:

rpath(){
    for path in "$@";do
        PATH="$(echo "$PATH" |sed -e "s#\(^\|:\)$(echo "$path" |sed -e 's/[^^]/[&]/g' -e 's/\^/\\^/g')\(:\|/\{0,1\}$\)#\1\2#" -e 's#:\+#:#g' -e 's#^:\|:$##g')"
    done
    echo "$PATH"
}

PATH="$(rpath ~/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin)"
PATH="$(rpath /usr/games)"
# etc ...

This will make it easier to handle multiple paths.

Notes:

• You will need to add these codes in the Bash configuration file (~/.bashrc or whatever).
• Run source ~/.bashrc to reload the Bash configuration (~/.bashrc) file.