Set environment variables on Mac OS X Lion

Question

When someone says \"edit your .plist file\" or \"your .profile\" or \".bash_profile\" etc, this just confuses me. I have no idea where these files are, how to create them if

Answer 1

Open Terminal:

vi ~/.bash_profile

Apply changing to system (no need restart computer):

source ~/.bash_profile

(Also work with macOS Sierra 10.12.1)