search path

The list of directories in which the operating system or a program will look for needed files. This path can be set by the user. Often, the user can specify several different paths to be searched; if one path does not lead to the file, one of the others may. For executable files, the setting of an environment variable called PATH is used. For Informix database files, the setting of the DBPATH environment variable is used.

See also database, environment variable, operating system, source path.