Bash commands not found — $PATH damaged

Question

I accidentally made a mistake when I changed my ~/.bash_profile file and now I'm unable to run any command, such as ls, touch, sudo, etc.

When I write echo $PATH I have this result:

$ echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:
$

And when I type /bin/cat ~/.bash_profile, I have this result:

export PATH=$HOME/local/node/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATHh

But I am unable to change it. Can someone help me, please?

how are you unable to change it? can you use "`vi`" or "`emacs`" in Terminal? — Michael Dautermann, Sep 01 '13 at 23:21
You can also run `/usr/bin/open -e ~/.bash_profile` to edit `~/.bash_profile` in TextEdit. — Lri, Sep 02 '13 at 07:05
Possible duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7362504/bash-script-always-prints-command-not-found — tripleee, Jan 23 '19 at 04:04

score 26 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 01 '13 at 23:22

26

If you can do /bin/cat, you should be able to /usr/bin/vi, too. Alternately, just fix it in your local shell:

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin

And then running your favourite editor should work again.

answered Sep 01 '13 at 23:22

Carl Norum

1 Answers1