setting environment variables - grails

Question

I'm setting up grails, and these are the commands the README indicates you should run for a unix machine. My problem is that the echo command doesn't output anything like it should. I double checked and have the grails folder in the right directory.
> set GRAILS_HOME=~/grails
> export GRAILS_HOME
> echo ${GRAILS_HOME}
~/grails

Answer 1

you need to set the path variable:
export GRAILS_HOME=/path/to/grails
export PATH=$PATH:$GRAILS_HOME/bin
For OS X Lion you add these lines this is to your ~/.bash_profile file. This is the same as your /Users/macUsername/.bash_profile. After saving this edit, new terminal windows will have this effect in place. You can also run source ~/.bash_profile to make the change happen in your current terminal window.
On another *nix you would edit a slightly different file.
The .bash_profile file holds commands that run every time you start your terminal.

Answer 2

Installation from Download
Prerequisites
Before you can start using Grails you will need to install a Java SDK (not just a JRE) and set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the location of that SDK. The minimum required version of the SDK depends on which version of Grails you are using:
Java SDK 1.4+ for Grails 1.0.x and 1.1.x
Java SDK 1.5+ for Grails 1.2 or greater
Steps
Download the latest Grails release
Extract the archive into an appropriate location; typically C:\grails on Windows or ~/grails on Unix
Create a GRAILS_HOME environment variable that points to the path where you extracted the archive (eg C:\grails on Windows or ~/grails on Unix)
If you have not set the JAVA_HOME environment variable yet, create JAVA_HOME environment variable that points to the path where you have installed Java
Append a reference to the "bin" directory within the Grails directory to your PATH variable (eg %GRAILS_HOME%\bin on Windows or $GRAILS_HOME/bin on Unix). Note that, for Windows, both PATH and GRAILS_HOME must be defined at the same environment variable level (eg. 'System variables') rather than across environment variable levels (eg. PATH under 'System variables' and GRAILS_HOME under 'User variables')
Type "grails" at the command line, if a help message is displayed you are ready to start using Grails!
If you get an error message, try to chmod +x the grails script inside the bin directory.
Installation from Git (The Version Control Repository)
Prerequisites
In order to start using Grails from Git you need to have the following:
An installation of Java 1.5 or higher and have set your JAVA_HOME variable to the install location
A Git client
Steps
Check out Grails from the Git repository
by running: git clone git://github.com/grails/grails-core.git
Set the GRAILS_HOME environment variable to CHECKOUT_LOCATION/grails-core
Add the $GRAILS_HOME/bin directory to your PATH environment variable
What happens next depends on which branch you are working on.
For the 2.0.x and the 'master' branch:
Go to the GRAILS_HOME directory and run: ./gradlew install
That's it! You can now start developing in Grails using your custom copy of Grails!
For the 1.3.x branch:
Go to the GRAILS_HOME directory and run: ./gradlew libs
Then from the GRAILS_HOME directory run: ./gradlew install
That's it! You can now start developing in Grails using your custom copy of Grails!
For the 1.2.x branch:
If you don't have Ant 1.7 (or later) installed, you will need to
set ANT_HOME to $GRAILS_HOME/ant
add $ANT_HOME/bin to your PATH environment variable
you may need to give the scripts in $ANT_HOME/bin execute permissions
Increase the java memory to 1024M by setting ANT_OPTS=-Xmx1024M
Go to the GRAILS_HOME directory and type ant jar to build Grails
That's it! You can now start developing in Grails using your custom copy of Grails!
Confirm your grails install by grails -version