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If I do:

  (getenv "PATH")

I get a list of colon-separated directories, including:

  /Users/michaeln/Library/Haskell/bin

If I look at the exec-path variable, I see a list including the same directory. If I do:

  (shell-command "echo $PATH")

I get a list of colon-separated directories including the same Haskell/bin directory as above. There is an executable pandoc in that directory. And yet, if I do:

  (shell-command "pandoc")

I get in response:

  /bin/bash: pandoc: command not found

What am I doing wrong?

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10
  • Try adding the path of the folder where pandoc is located to your exec-path: emacswiki.org/emacs/ExecPath
    – lawlist
    Apr 8, 2015 at 5:46
  • are you able to run pandoc from bash shell prompt?
    – Madhavan
    Apr 8, 2015 at 5:53
  • @lawlist I have; as above "If I look at the exec-path variable...".
    – Michael Norrish
    Apr 8, 2015 at 5:57
  • @MadhavanKumar Yes. If I run M-x shell and type pandoc --version, or if I run my usual shell within Terminal.app.
    – Michael Norrish
    Apr 8, 2015 at 5:58
  • exec-path is only relevant to binaries Emacs wants to run. In this instance Emacs is running a shell (and the shell is running pandoc), so I believe there's no particular reason in this case for pandoc to be accessible from exec-path.
    – phils
    Apr 8, 2015 at 7:35

1 Answer 1

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If you are adding your Haskell bin to your PATH in a .bashrc or similar dotfile, this file only gets loaded when running an "interactive" shell. This happens when running M-x shell but not when running M-! / (shell-command), as there is no prompt. You can adjust the option flags that are sent to (shell-command) by adjusting shell-command-switch to instruct it to act interactively and load your shell dotfile with:

(setq shell-command-switch "-ic")
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2
  • Curiously, something about my non-interactive bash setup must be setting my PATH rather than extending it: otherwise, surely the non-interactive shell would inherit the PATH variable that emacs has in its own environment.
    – Michael Norrish
    Apr 10, 2015 at 3:37
  • Now, without changing any of my config files, I can't even reproduce the behaviour. I have rebooted the relevant machine because it just upgraded OS X version. I think the comment about interactive vs non-interactive shells is still very valuable though. Thanks!
    – Michael Norrish
    Apr 10, 2015 at 3:44

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