I have never seen this way of defining a path [ PATH=~/XX:"${PATH}" ]
These lines come from .bash_profile:
# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d ~/bin ] ; then
PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}"
fi
I learned PATH="a path:a new path" everything inclosed in quotes. I
think (?) i tried your way yesterday and got strange results but I
deleted that test file so ....
Of course I tried PATH=~/XX:$PATH before, but when that didn't work,
I tried it the way .bash_profile showed me.