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Significance of a PATH explained

This is probably a rudimentary question but I am still kinda new to programming and I've wondered for awhile. I've done multiple projects in Python, C#, and Java, and when I try to use new libraries (especially for Python) people always say to make sure its in the right PATH and such. I just followed an online tutorial on how to install Java on a new computer and it rekindled my question of what a path really is. Is the Path just were the programming language looks for a library in the file system? I get kinda confused on what it's significance is. Again, I'm sorry for the wide question, its just something that I've never quite gotten on my own programming.
EDIT: I just wanted to thank everyone so much for answering my question. I know it was a pretty dumb one now that I've finally figured out what it is, but it really helped me. I'm slowly working through as many C#, Java and Python tutorials as I can find online, and it's nice to know I have somewhere to ask questions :)

The PATH is an environment variable which the shell (or other command interpreter) uses to search for commands. Usually (always?) commands are found with a greedy algorithm, so entries that come first in the PATH are returned first. For example, a command in /usr/local/bin will override a command in /usr/bin given a PATH such as
$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
while the purpose is consistent, the syntax is slightly different on WINDOWS - you would use
C:\> ECHO %PATH%
to "echo" your PATH.
First my shell is going to search /usr/local/sbin then /usr/local/bin then /usr/sbin and then /usr/bin before searching /sbin and /bin if the command isn't found then it will report that it couldn't find such a command...
# Like so
$ thisprogramdoesntexist
thisprogramdoesntexist: command not found
Now, on Linux at least, there's also a LD_LIBRARY_PATH which the system will use to search for dynamic libraries (greedily), on Windows I think it just uses the PATH. Finally, Java uses a CLASSPATH which is similar (but used to search for classes and JARs).
On Linux one might add an entry to the PATH like so,
$ export PATH="$PATH:/addNewFolder"
While on Windows you might use
set PATH=%PATH%;c:\addNewFolder
Sometimes, you might manipulate your PATH(s) to enable specific functionality, see update-java-alternatives on Ubuntu for an example.

A PATH is a file directory on your computer. If you need to install a programming language, you might need to put it in your system PATH variable. This means that the system looks to these files for different information, IE where the libraries for the code you are using are.
Hope that helped!

Exactly as other said, PATH is a list of folders that is included in the search -other than the current folder- and you can always access straight away. It's one of the Environment Variables.
For example, we have the python folder in C:\Python27. I'm sure you know that to run a python file, we commonly use python script.py.
What happens is that the command line searches for python.exe in your current folder, and if not found, search it in the folders in the path variable.
To read the path, you can, straightforwardly use:
$ PATH
If you're on windows, like i am, an easy way to deal with this is to just use System Properties. Just type it in the start menu, open it, and go to the 'advanced' tab. Click on the Environment Variables, there! You'll see a PATH variable, and you can modify it as you want.
I myself use more than one version of Python, and to deal with this, i appended all the folders to PATH, and changed my python.exe to pythonversion_number.exe. Problem solved! Now, i can run this in the command line:
$ python26 script.py
$ python33 script2.py
Some further reading on this, if you're interested, here's a good question asked
Hope this helps!

The best resource (so far) about PATH information, you can see in this question:
https://superuser.com/questions/284342/what-are-path-and-other-environment-variables-and-how-can-i-set-or-use-them
Stack Overflow is not the best place to search about this, always check the amazing
https://superuser.com/ for this kind of question.

PATH is a symbolic name usually associated to string values separated by a semicolons (where each string part is a directory name). This symbolic name (and its values) is handled by the operating system and could be modified by the end user through the some command line instruction like SET PATH=........ or through some kind of user interface configuration tool.
It is common practice for tools like compilers or other programming tools to look at this symbolic name and use the list of string values for searching files that are not directly available in the current folder used by the tools.
So, if an installation procedure set the PATH symbol in this way
SET PATH=%path%;C:\PROGRAM FILES\MYTOOLFOLDER;
it means, set the PATH symbol to the previous value (%PATH%) and add another string value to it (C:\PROGRAM FILES\MYTOOLFOLDER).
Then the tool, when it needs to search for a particular file or library, could read the PATH symbol values, split them at the semicolons and iteratively look at the directories listed one by one looking for the file required.
In C# programming, for example, the tool code could contain something like this
string pathSymbol = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("PATH");
string[] pathFolders = pathSymbol.Split(';');
foreach(string folder in pathFolders)
{
if(File.Exists(Path.Combine(folder, "mylibrary.dll"))
{
..... do whatever you need to do with the file
}
}
This example assumes a Windows environment.

anksvn checkin file

I am using the most recent version of anksvn for a visual studio 2008 project file. I now
want to check this code into anksvn, but I am having a problem.
The situtation is, I checked in the most current version of code into anksvn. That is fine.
However I have another version of this code that I did not check out from subversion initially. This other copy of the code was for a 'demo' only. However now this code needs to become the production code. Thus I am trying to determine how to check this code into anksvn.
What I know I can do is to 'remove' the most curent code folder that is in anksvn. I could then place this project folder into that location. since the origianl 'demo' code also includes the current production code.
However I am trying to see if there is a better method to accomplish this goal. Could I possibly use the branch/switch option?

Is the demo code checked out of Subversion at all? I know you didn't check it out, but was it checked out? If it was, you could commit this code back into Subversion, then update your working directory.
It his code has nothing to do with Subversion, you will have to take a more complex route: You will have to copy the changes manually to your code.
Since you're using Windows, you should take a look at Beyond Compare, This is commercial code, but you can download a limited time demo for free -- more than enough time to handle your situation. I use Beyond Compare all the time to compare two different directories or Java jar files or zip archives, etc. It not only can quickly show you the differences, but makes it each to copy those differences from one to the other.
I have no relationship with Scooter software, the makers of Beyond Compare except as a customer.

How to check if the subversion URL is file or a directory using sharpsvn

First things first - I am sorry if you think this question is utterly stupid.
I am working on an application wherein the user can enter a SVN URL. It can either be a Directory or a file. I am using sharpsvn.
My aim is to somehow know if this url is a directory or a file.
For example : svn://svnrepository/Directory/pascal.cs
or svn://svnrepository/DirectoryName
are both valid entries. Its my job to differentiate between the two and bring out the fact that the former is a file while the latter is a directory.
Can this be done using sharpsvn ?
Thanks and Regards
Gagan

Condireng that it't only a wrapper over a real subversion, for you it should be enough to execute
svn info $path$
in the result set there has to be Node Type string. That would be give you description either it a directory or file.
Hope this helps.

You could use one of the following:
svnlook proplist
svn info
svn ls ... -depth empty
The last two are illustrated in "Check that an svn repository url does not exist".
You can encapsulate those calls in SVNSharp hook following the examples of "How can i get access to the SVN pre-commit message using SharpSVN?"

How to get the installation directory (installed with MSI, created with VS2010) at a custom uninstall action?

So I've created a simple msi-setup for my application using a setup project and added a couple of custom actions that take care of stuff like extracting files from archives. Now, there are two extra files in my program files -directory which means that the MSI won't remove the directory at the uninstall by itself. My solution to this was to create a custom action that removes the rest of the files.
Now this works just fine and dandy, as long as the default directory is used at installation. But what if the user chooses to change it? I'd assume there has to be a very simple way to read the directory at the custom action, but I'm not quite sure what that is.
As far as I've found out by googling, there are properties such as TARGETDIR related to the MSI-package. However, some sites also say that I should be setting this property by myself, at the installation stage.
All this has left me quite confused. Basically I see two ways to resolve this:
1) Make sure the application does not create files by itself, and the MSI will take care of it. This would mean a bit more work because I'm not responsible for those extra files.
2) Find out the installation directory at the custom action while uninstalling the application, and remove the last bits by myself. This is the quick-and-dirty way as I see it, and would definitely suffice for now. But how to accomplish this?
Also while I'm here I might as well ask this one more related question. As I mentioned earlier, I extract some files at the install. Now, I'd like to get rid of these archives once I've extracted them. The problem is, if I do this, MSI will think my installation is broken and copy them back each time I launch the application. So how to avoid this?

There is no need to use a custom action to remove the files. MSI has built in support for this scenario in two steps:
Use a search to locate the files you want to remove. Here is a tutorial
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa371564(VS.85).aspx
Then you can schedule a file removal operation to actually delete the files.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa371201(VS.85).aspx
Regarding your second question:
Don't add the archives to the File table. Instead create some self extracting archives and use binary custom actions to unpack them.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa368085(VS.85).aspx

Write Resource file for .net project using the command line

I need to create a resource file for a .net project (by hand) and compile it using the ResGen.exe tool provided by the .NET framework. I can't find any documentation for this. I need to write the resource file by hand because I'm in a situation where I don't want to download/buy extra tools (like VS) to generate this resource file, and also I feel more productive through the command-line (helps me understand how things really work).
So I need to write a resource file by hand to store an ICON in the executable and use it from within my program. I would also like to use this icon to represent my executable in Windows Explorer.
Any references would be great!

Visual C# Express Edition will do what you want for free. If nothing else you can download that, create the resource file and then use that as a subject for your admirable curiosity about 'how it really works'. This may also save you some time in manual experimentation to get it right the first time around.

These 2 links in conjunction provide information on using that tool to create and embed an icon file, it seems specific to C#. Of course i'm guessing at your full intention, let me know if this points you in the proper direction.
http://www.xtremedotnettalk.com/showthread.php?t=75449
specifically there is a post which states;
I think you should first create a *.resources-File from the Icon with the tool named "Resgen.exe"...
resgen App.ico App.ico.resources
the next step would be compiling...
csc /t:winexe /out:Keygen.exe /res:App.ico.resources /r:Crypto.dll /win32icon:App.ico Keygen.cs AssemblyInfo.cs
I'm sure you were here already.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ccec7sz1(VS.80).aspx

You should check this link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ekyft91f.aspx
It explains what formatter is used and gives some code samples to generate one from code. You could then write a small wrapper app that you can call from the command line. No downloads needed!