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up vote 2 down vote favorite

Under Arch USB iso, zsh, running the script ./test containing : 

#!/bin/bash
PATH=$(dirname $0)
ls $PATH

returns

ls: command not found

Any idea how to fix this ?

EDIT : ls alone works but not when I'm adding $PATH

Edit : just realized from the comments that $PATH is an environment variable and I was replacing its value...

share|improve this question
    
You can try to make a ls using for f in *; do echo $f; done , and try to determine the ls location, by this for equivalent for ls. But i think its a path problem. – Luciano Andress Martini Jul 25 at 14:12
1  
Put echo $PATH in your script. If it doesn't contain /bin then add it. – 123 Jul 25 at 14:27
    
It is good to strip a program to its minimum before pasting here, but please ensure that it is no smaller (test that the smaller program still exhibits the fault). – richard Jul 25 at 14:51
up vote 3 down vote accepted

The variable PATH is a special one. There are a lot of special variables (and all are all capital, so easily avoided). PATH holds a list of directories to search for commands.

For fun and learning (though these are the same thing), type echo $PATH, outside of script, to see what it has in it.

To fix problem do not break PATH: use a different variable name (not all capitals).

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up vote 1 down vote

Try /bin/ls, it seems that ls is not in the path as @123 has mentioned in the comment.

To add /bin to the PATH. Add in ~/.bashrc

export $PATH=$PATH:/bin
share|improve this answer
    
This question was correct, before more detail was added to question. – richard Jul 25 at 17:14
up vote 0 down vote

Try:

#!/bin/bash
PATH="$PATH:$(dirname $0)"
ls $PATH

This way you're adding $(dirname $0) to the PATH variable instead of replacing it. Or, if you don't want to edit the environment variable and want to use $(dirname $0) separately, use a different variable name.

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