Missing Bash Prompt on macOS – How to Restore

bashcommand linemacos

My bash prompt is missing as shown on the image. I'm not even sure how to open the .bash_profile since dot files are hidden in the finder.
I restarted the machine to no avail.

Best Answer

Setting aside the problem with your shell - there are lots of ways to get to a clean prompt:

make a new user account and use that command line to become root: sudo -s and then go in and nuke/fix/move your files

You also could try booting to single user mode, mounting the filesystem read+write and cleaning things. I'd go the new user route since you can log out of your user without needing a restart.

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MacOS – How to hide ‘Hidden’ files

Try:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles false

or with a lowercase f in finder, depending on the version of Mac OS X. And then:

killall Finder

macOS PATH Error – How to Fix ~/.bash_profile Commmands Not Recognized

The simplest way is to restore from a backup e.g from Time Machine
However if the last backup is long enough ago that there is other changes you want to keep the you can edit .bash_profile

In terminal

In a terminal you can use the full path to the editors ( /usr/bin/emacs /usr/bin/vi or /usr/bin/nano) to edit ~/.bash_profile

e.g.

/usr/bin/nano ~/.bash_profile

Or you could open it with the default text editor (by default TextEdit) via:

/usr/bin/open ~/.bash_profile

In GUI - from Dock or Finder

But also you can do this from TextEdit (or other GUI editors) by File->Open and go to your home directory. Depending on if you have set Finder to show all files or not show hidden ones (the default) you will either see .bash_profile in the list or you can hit ⌘ CMD+⇧ SHIFT+. which reveals hidden files in Open/Save dialogs. (the shortcut is from this answer)

Best Answer

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MacOS – How to hide ‘Hidden’ files

macOS PATH Error – How to Fix ~/.bash_profile Commmands Not Recognized

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