MacOS – Commands not found in Terminal except echo

bashmacosterminal

In my terminal basic commands are not found like:

mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ ls
-bash: ls: command not found
mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ env
-bash: env: command not found
mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ edit
-bash: edit: command not found
mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ open
-bash: open: command not found
mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ vi
-bash: vi: command not found
mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ tail
-bash: tail: command not found
mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ ls
-bash: ls: command not found

But echo is working. Like: mds-macbook-pro:~ ZILLURRAHMAN$ echo $PATH “users/ZILLURRAHMAN/desktop/bioinformatics/bow-tie/bowtie2-2.2.3/BT2_HOME:??

I can call up programs like pico using their full path like /usr/bin/pico.

Best Answer

The issue is that your PATH is messed up. The reason why echo works is because it is a builtin command in the shell so the shell does not use your path to find the executable.

You need to see what script file had an export PATH in it which set it to “users/ZILLURRAHMAN/desktop/bioinformatics/bow-tie/bowtie2-2.2.3/BT2_HOME:?? which has many error in it.

The usual files are ~/.profile ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile for more see many question on bash

Related Solutions

MacOS – Terminal returns not found for most commands Mac OSX

$PATH should contain these folders: /usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin.

Try editing ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, or ~/.bash_login (with for example /usr/bin/open ~/.bash_profile -a TextEdit) and commenting out any lines that modify the path.

If that works, you can add a line like export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH to ~/.bash_profile.

MacOS – Characters do not echo in OS X terminal unless I hit the delete key

Your prompt is messed up, specifically PS1:

PS1=$[\033]0;37m]

that's missing a lot of escape characters (\e[) needed for the colors (and most useful parameters for a PS1). That's also why you get the 37m in the terminal window title. Try setting it to something different by running:

export PS1="\e[0;31m[\h:\W \u]\$\e[m "

and see if that works. It should give a red (thats \e[0;31m) prompt showing hostname (\h), current working directory (\W) and logged in user (\u) inside brackets [] and the bash exit status of the previous command (\$). Note that at the end the color is reset to the default of the session with \e[m .

If the above worked, you only have to find out from which configuration file your "bad" PS1 comes from: look for an "export PS1=" line in ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bashrc, (as M K already suggested in his answer) and put in the above version.

There are a lot of answers around here with helpful colors codes and inputs for configuring the PS1, like this one for example.