commands not found on zsh

Question

I am using the z Shell (zsh) instead of the default bash, and something wrong happen so that all commands who used to work are no longer recognized:

ls
zsh: command not found: ls

open -e .zshrc
zsh: correct 'open' to '_open' [nyae]? 

I don't know how to reset zsh or how to fix this. Here is the content of $PATH variable:

echo $PATH
/Users/Malloc/bin/Sencha/Cmd/3.1.2.342:/usr/local/bin/mate

I cannot open the .bash_profile file nor .zshrc file, seems the only solution is to reset the zsh. Any ideas?

EDIT:

I even tried to reset zsh as indicated in this thread, but always got command not found error:

exec zsh
zsh: command not found: zsh

so what's going on? why all commands are lost?

Answer 1

It's evident that you've managed to mess up your PATH variable. (Your current PATH doesn't contain any location where common utilities are located.)

Try:

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:${PATH}
export PATH

Alternatively, for "resetting" zsh, specify the complete path to the shell:

exec /bin/zsh

or

exec /usr/bin/zsh