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This question about PATH has a perfectly valid part (Question 1) which has great answers and a score of 267 which show how useful it is. However, the question also has a much longer second part (Question 2) which is not reproducible and related to a localized issue of the OP's system. In its current state it just confuses the readers, making them believe that a perfectly valid way of setting PATH variable does not work.

Could someone advise me on what should be done in a situation like this? Personally I feel that the irrelevant part of the question should be simply removed, but I'm kind of afraid of suggesting an edit which removes content from a popular question without getting a second opinion.

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That would indeed have been a good edit to make but you're quite right that it would have looked strange at first glance.

I have now removed the second, misleading question from the post. Thanks for bringing it up.

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  • But doesn't that invalidate an existing answer now?
    – muru
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 0:11
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    @muru true, but that answer basically states "Wot? Both your examples work!". I felt it's not worth keeping a misleading question for that one answer of 4 years ago.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 11:31
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    @muru: I've sometimes cleaned things up on SO and left a small note at the bottom of the post explaining that the original version had this confusing other stuff, and that's what some of the comments are replying to. So future readers don't have to take time to figure out what the comments are talking about, and know they can check the revision history if they're curious. But they're also not distracted by a bunch of wrong / obsolete stuff in the post. e.g. stackoverflow.com/a/776523/224132
    – Peter Cordes
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 18:21
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    @PeterCordes hmm. Maybe someone should edit in the misleading part as a quote to that answer.
    – muru
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 18:22
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    I just added the deleted section to that answer.
    – muru
    Commented Sep 20, 2015 at 23:56

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