Environment variables won't take effect on Mac OS X

Question

I've been trying back and forth to set environment variables in the Terminal.app but it won't take any effect.

Here's the scenario: With the Terminal open I write

pico .profile

Then in the editor I enter

export JAVA_HOME="Library/Java/Home"
export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH

Then I press ctrl+x to exit and y to save. I exit the terminal and when I open it up again and write

echo $JAVA_HOME

I only get an empty line. Can I edit the .profile in another way? I've tried every possible combination to set this variable but I keep getting an empty line. I have restarted the system several times with no luck at all.

Answer 1

I solved this problem by editing the ~/.bash_profile instead.

When you use pico .profile instead of editing the file, which will make a new file, I chose "read file" (I think it is ctrl=r) and it showed me a lot of files. From there I chose .bash_profile.

That was my solution. I don't know if it's the best solution but it worked for me.