CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
Dan Zehner
Dan Zehner

Reputation: 13

How do I fix a corrupted PATH line in bash profile?

I'm trying to install Homebrew via Bash, and I'm very new to using the terminal for things like this. I was using this tutorial for the install: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-homebrew-on-macos#step-3-%E2%80%94-installing-and-setting-up-homebrew

I got to the step where I'm updating the PATH variable, I put in the wrong path to the folder I want my Homebrew files stored to. Here's what I get now when I try to look at my Bash profile:

$ source ~/.bash_profile
-bash: export: `mac/applications/Homebrew:/name': not a valid identifier
$ nano ~/.bash_profile
-bash: nano: command not found

I've tried using the answer from this question: How to edit corrupted bash profile but it didn't work. When I use /usr/bin/vim ~/.bash_profile I get this result:

export PATH=/name my mac/applications/Homebrew:$PATH
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"~/.bash_profile" 2L, 54C

This doesn't seem to be the normal Bash profile editor, and I am unable to remove the incorrect PATH variable from this screen. Any ideas?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 943

Answers (4)

petrus4
petrus4

Reputation: 614

cp ~/.bash_profile ~/dead_bash_profile
cp /etc/profile ~/.bash_profile

This will probably induce screams of horror from other users here, but it's one of those fun *nix solutions which will either work perfectly, or fail catastrophically. If you're feeling less adventurous, use /etc/skel/profile instead of /etc/profile, if it exists.

This will do two things for you.

a} It will give you back a temporary working .bash_profile for now, which you very much need.

b} It will preserve the corrupt bash profile in a copy, until you have learned enough about terminal use more generally, that you can come back and figure out what is wrong with it. The reason why that is important, is because a .bash_profile with a corrupt PATH line probably still contains other things which you will want to keep, so just nuking it from orbit isn't necessarily a good idea.

If you want to learn more about use of the terminal, (and you should, both for your own benefit, and because it's a dying art which needs new students) then I recommend study of what you will find at the following two links:-

https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

https://www.amazon.com/Ed-Mastery-Standard-Unix-Editor-ebook/dp/B07BVBSDNZ

Upvotes: 0

KamilCuk
KamilCuk

Reputation: 141930

export PATH=/name my mac/applications/Homebrew:$PATH

Use quotes around arguments with spaces. You should do:

export PATH="/name my mac/applications/Homebrew:$PATH"

This doesn't seem to be the normal Bash profile editor, and I am unable to remove the incorrect PATH variable from this screen. Any ideas?

It seems like a normal expected output from vim editor. Use a different more beginner friendly editor if you're not familiar with vim. Any text editor will be fine.

Upvotes: 1

Henk Langeveld
Henk Langeveld

Reputation: 8456

It looks like vim is showing you a .bash_profile with just the single line.

Set a decent minimal value for path first, by typing this line in bash:

$ PATH=/bin:/usr/bin

Assuming nano is installed in /usr/bin, just nano .bash_profile should work again.

Otherwise, just mv .bash_profile .bash_profile.saved or, if you're sure it contains just that one line, rm .bash_profile to get rid of it entirely.

Upvotes: 1

user9706
user9706

Reputation:

I don't know what the "normal Bash profile editor" is. You can use your editor of choice (vim, nano, emacs, etc) to edit your .bash_profile which is just a plain text file. In this case you may want to just delete the line entirely, of if that is the only thing in the file as the above suggest, you could delete it with rm .bash_profile.

Upvotes: 0

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