MAC bash commands stop working properly

Question

I was trying to install some stuff for scala development on my MAC, and probably I managed broke the shell/terminal while I was mindlessly running some scripts that I don't know.

Now when I start the terminal it always starts with this line;

$ /sbin:sbin:/usr/local/bin': not a valid identifier

And now when I try, I see some bash commands does not work, for instance grep, syslog..etc I get an error saying;

-bash syslog: "no such file or directory"   

Any idea what is wrong and how can I fix this

Answer 1

I guess you have an illegal space in the PATH variable assignment like so:

export PATH= /sbin:sbin:/usr/local/bin

# -bash: export: `/sbin:sbin:/usr/local/bin': not a valid identifier

ls 

# -bash: ls: No such file or directory

# right way is to just drop the space
export PATH=/sbin:sbin:/usr/local/bin