Do I really need to export path in .profile?

Question

Following models provided in various places, currently in my ~/.profile where I have many lines that append or prepend directories to PATH, I also have corresponding export commands, e.g.:
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/apache2/bin:$PATH
PATH="${PATH}:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.3/bin"
export PATH
As I undertand things, the purpose of export is to make a setting available to subprocesses. And my understanding is that PATH is an "environment variable" in the technical sense of the term, that is, it is automatically exported.
So with OS X, is any purpose actually served by having those explicit exports in ~/.profile?
Same question if I moved all the path settings into ~/.bash_profile  .

Answer 1

Well...
The LabView version I am using is 6.1.
Old I know, but the powers that be, see no reason to upgrade.
That being said...Yes, I have looked at some of the Labview examples.
When I run them, I have no choice but to set the device channel to a virtual channel I have already created in the data neighborhood.
Otherwise I get the error -10001 occurred at AI Group Config.
When I read a value in MAX, it works fine but I do not want to have to use the data neighborhood.
I have taken over a cycler project, and the company plans to send the software abroad. The old engineer setup about 50 virtual channels and my boss does not want us to have to go and manually set them up each time. I know that they can be saved, but that does not help my cause due to the fact it is time consuming and may cause complications down the road. It seems preferable to hard code the data in the Labview code.
I have spent the day messing around with my 6025e but if I do not use a virtual channel, the data comes back incorrect.
"If you have to use traditional DAQ because your version of Labview doesn't support it, the syntax is similar (i.e. 0:1) if each channel is configured the same. If not, you would use a different element for each in the channels array and corresponding elements in the input limits and coupling arrays."
I have not looked deep enough to see if each channel is configured the same or not. I am simply trying to start with one channel, reading back a voltage from a variable power supply. Once I can correctly read the voltage, without having a virtual channel declared, my problems should be over. What kind of element for each channel should I declare? Have you an example with "corresponding elements in the input limits and coupling arrays."?