'adb' is not recognized as a command

Question

In my new MacBook, I installed latest Android Studio. Then, in terminal, I created the .bash_profile, and added following lines to the file:

export ANDROID_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk

export ANDROID_TOOLS=$ANDROID_HOME/tools

export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform_tools

export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_TOOLS

After that, I run command source .bash_profile, then I type adb command, but get error that adb is not recognized as a command. Why? I also echo $PATH, I saw the platform_tools directory of Android sdk is there & there is adb file under that directory.

====== UPDATE =====

It is interesting, if I do following, it works:

export PATH=$PATH:/Users/myname/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools
export PATH=$PATH:/Users/myname/Library/Android/sdk/tools
export ANDROID_HOME=/Users/myname/Library/Android/sdk

WHY? Isn't ~ above identical to /Users/myname? Why my original script doesn't work but the above one works? I don't understand....Please someone explain to me.

Answer 1

Depending on the shell, export variable definitions can be treated differently than normal assignments — in particular, tilde expansion might not occur at all.

If this is the case, then every unresolved tilde in a variable stays unresolved even if this variable gets expanded somewhere else. According to the docs:

The order of expansions is: brace expansion; tilde expansion, parameter and variable expansion, <…>

You might want to try this:

ANDROID_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk
export ANDROID_HOME

export ANDROID_TOOLS=$ANDROID_HOME/tools

export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform_tools

export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_TOOLS

If it doesn`t help, you can also try $HOME:

ANDROID_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk
export ANDROID_HOME

Answer 2

This pretty fundamental stuff:
In the current directory (./) execute command "adb"
./adb (you say this works).
what you want is adb (execute command adb found from the PATH variable), if the command "adb" can be found after searching in ALL paths in the PATH variable, execute the command adb where it is found.
A common precursor in the path entries is "." (current directory) but is discouraged due to executable name abuse (same name in a random directory).
Different paths are separated by the path separation variable (in windows it is semicolon ";" UNIX usually colon ":" ALSO MAC). Your multiple exports SEEM to be over writing each other, do it once with the appropriate separator ":" and all your paths in one (or ALWAYS include $PATH: to retain all previous exports).
it should be in ../somewhere../sdk/platform-tools/adb
(where ever your SDK resides) export PATH=$PATH:/Users/myname/Library/Android/sdk/platform-tools seems ok (be careful not to over-ride it[erase]).
After a re-boot all paths should be honored.
NB
in UNIX we have the "which adb" command which tells us where the executable resides. In Windows with tools like cygwin we can also do the same thing.
I believe Mac has Homebrew.

Answer 3

In your example all lines work OK (but pay particular attention to platform_tools folder's name):

export ANDROID_HOME=~/Library/Android/sdk
export ANDROID_TOOLS=$ANDROID_HOME/tools
export PATH=$PATH:$ANDROID_HOME/platform_tools:$ANDROID_TOOLS

source .bash_profile
adb

so, you've got a mistake:

platform_tools

instead of:

platform-tools

Also, you could try this solution, it works fine:

# print two export commands to your ~/.bash_profile
echo "export ANDROID_HOME=/Users/swift/Library/Android/sdk" >> ~/.bash_profile
echo "export PATH=${PATH}:$ANDROID_HOME/tools:$ANDROID_HOME/platform-tools" >> ~/.bash_profile

# Refresh bash profile (or restart Terminal.app)
source ~/.bash_profile

# Start using your adb command
adb --version
adb devices