Question: I can't remember why, but a long time ago, I found that for some reason, I needed to set both of these variables. It caused no problems in bash, but now in zsh, when I put

```
export PATH=~/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export path=$PATH

```

(the same thing I used in .bashrc) in my initialization, I get

```
/Users/…/.zshenv:export:7: path: inconsistent type for assignment

```

**What do they mean by "type," and what is $path used for?**

Answer: 
PATH is a scalar value- a continuous string of search paths separated by colons and path is an array of search paths. `zsh` will sync both path and PATH. There is no need for you to do so.
Here's a nice tip

`print -l $path`

because the type of this variable is an array, more operations are available