I messed up my /.bash_profile and Bash will not recognize most commands

Question

I was trying to add paths to my ~/.bash_profile and accidentally screwed up the final one right when I closed it. Now, I cannot use a majority of the basic shell commands, like ls, touch, etc. I can still use echo and cd. When I echo my path, I get: “/Users/Forthman/Desktop/paml/bin:??. If I try other commands, I get: -bash: touch: command not found.

My ~/.bash_profile is invisible, and so I cannot directly open it in TextWrangler or TextEdit. How can I fix this?

Answer 1

Open TextWrangler. Press the command key and o key. A dialog box will open. Press the shift key, the command key and the period key and your dot files will be visible in the dialog box.