i accidentally changed my path in zsh terminal and cant fix it. basic commands like ls,clear,.. are not working. i somehow managed to set the bash terminal, but the zsh is still not working.
i also can't run my c program in vs code beacause of the issue with zsh.
could you help me?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.0
Try first setting
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
Now find the shell initialization file where you messed up PATH and fix it using whatever text editor you normally use while in the Terminal, or get BBedit (the basic features are free) if you prefer a GUI text editor.
Try first setting
export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
Now find the shell initialization file where you messed up PATH and fix it using whatever text editor you normally use while in the Terminal, or get BBedit (the basic features are free) if you prefer a GUI text editor.
I’ll assume you’ve tried logging out and restarting the Terminal session.
Which means you’ve edited one or more your login files, or some recently-installed tool has gotten “helpful”.
Which means removing the malfunctioning edits.
Which then means using full paths to the tools and a command-line fix, or using a different (Admin) login to fix the file from a different (and working) login (with sudo), or (probably easiest) using Finder to rename the edited file(s).
To use Finder…
When defaulted to your login (home) folder in Finder, use Command-Shift-Period to toggle (on) hidden files in Finder.
For zsh, look for .zprofile, .zshenv, .zshrc, .zlogin, and .zlogout. (Write-up: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/388622/zsh-zprofile-zshrc-zlogin-what-goes-where)
And for the bash equivalent login files (which seem to be working here), look for .bashrc, .bash_profile, .bash_login, and .profile files.
Tilde ~ is a shell mechanism for your home directory, so these same files could be referenced as ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile from the command line.
Rename whichever of these are found, maybe to .zshenv_20211209, or to .bash_profile_20211209 or some such.
The file dates are usually a pretty good clue about which of these got tweaked, if you don’t recall the details of the changes, or if some pesky add-on tool tweaked the files without your direct involvement.
Once you have renamed the altered files, your changes will no longer be active, and your (newly-started) Terminal sessions will revert to their default behavior.
You can then examine your edits to these files from the command line, and to whatever (probably) corrupted your PATH setting.
There are other ways out of this, such as specifying the full path to each of the tools you are using, and editing hr PATH from the command line.
basic commands in terminal not working - due to path change.
