Permanently add a directory to PYTHONPATH?

Question

Whenever I use sys.path.append, the new directory will be added. However, once I close python, the list will revert to the previous (default?) values. How do I

Answer 1

Adding export PYTHONPATH="${PYTHONPATH}:/my/other/path" to the ~/.bashrc might not work if PYTHONPATH does not currently exist (because of the :).

export PYTHONPATH="/my/other/path1"
export PYTHONPATH="${PYTHONPATH}:/my/other/path2"

Adding the above to my ~/.bashrc did the trick for me on Ubuntu 16.04