Environment variables not working in Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I am new to Linux. It's my first time working with the command line and I'm trying to make it a web sever for learning purposes, so I am not going for lamp stack. Instead I am installing all the programs like apache, php, and mysql manually.

I got apache working and php is working as well but the problem I'm facing is that I can't run commands like php -i. Instead I have to run it like path/to/php/bin-directory/php -i.

In Windows we can achieve this by adding environment variables so I looked around, and it seeme like we can do the same thing in Ubuntu. So I modified the /etc/environment file and added the path to php, and I also tried adding the path via this command:

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/php/bin-directory/

Both these methods worked and added the path to the environment variable. I confirmed it via printenv, but I am still unable to call the php command directly with php -i.

I am not even sure if that's how it's supposed to work, so any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks

Edit:

Output of a few commands:

Answer 1

Every time you execute command:

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/php/bin-directory/

you modify the environment in the current shell, i.e. the program executed in the terminal window. That change will not happen to other terminal windows (or even other tabs on the current terminal program). That change would not survive logoff/logon and/or restart.

To make that change persistent see question How to add a directory to the PATH?