Pathcomp is a minimal tool for compressing a $PATH-like environment variables so that:

• Individual paths occur only once
• The (effective) ordering of paths remains unchanged

$ git clone [email protected]:mjhanninen/pathcomp.git
$ cd pathcomp
$ cargo install --path .

Typically you would have something like in your .profile:

export PATH=$(pathcomp "$PATH")

In case you are unsure if pathcomp is available:

if which pathcomp &>/dev/null; then
    PATH=$(pathcomp "$PATH")
fi
export PATH

Pathcomp deduplicates paths while retaining the order of the first path instances:

$ echo $(pathcomp "/foo:/bar:/foo:/bar")
/foo:/bar

$ echo $(pathcomp "/bar:/foo:/bar:/foo")
/bar:/foo

Pathcomp pulls the paths matching the prefixes specified with the --prefix (or -p) options to the front. If case multiple prefixes match the same path then the prefix with longest match is used:

$ echo $(pathcomp -p /foo "/foo:/bar:/foo/bar/baz:/foo/bar")
/foo:/foo/bar/baz:/foo/bar:/bar

$ echo $(pathcomp -p /foo/bar -p /foo "/foo:/bar:/foo/bar/baz:/foo/bar")
/foo/bar/baz:/foo/bar:/foo:/bar