How to get the PYTHONPATH in shell?

The environment variable PYTHONPATH is actually only added to the list of locations Python searches for modules. You can print out the full list in the terminal like this:

python -c "import sys; print(sys.path)"

Or if want the output in the UNIX directory list style (separated by :) you can do this:

python -c "import sys; print(':'.join(x for x in sys.path if x))"

Which will output something like this:

/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/feedparser-5.1.3-py2.7.egg:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/stripogram-1.5-py2.7.egg:/home/qiime/lib:/home/debian:/usr/lib/python2.7:/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-linux2:/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk:/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old:/usr/lib/python2.7/lib- dynload:/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages:/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages:/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/PIL:/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gst-0.10:/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0:/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7

Just write:

just write which python in your terminal and you will see the python path you are using.

Those of us using Python 3.x should do this:

python -c "import sys; print(sys.path)"