Setting environment variables on OS X

Question

What is the proper way to modify environment variables like PATH in OS X?

I\'ve looked on Google a little bit and found three different files to edit:

Answer 1

Just did this really easy and quick. First create a ~/.bash_profile from terminal:

touch .bash_profile

then

open -a TextEdit.app .bash_profile

add

export TOMCAT_HOME=/Library/Tomcat/Home

save documement and you are done.