You need to use the command echo $PATH
to display the PATH variable or you can just execute set
or env
to display all of your environment variables.
By typing $PATH
you tried to run your PATH variable contents as a command name.
Bash displayed the contents of your path any way. Based on your output the following directories will be searched in the following order:
/usr/local/share/npm/bin
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/sbin
~/bin
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/opt/X11/bin
/usr/local/git/bin
To me this list appears to be complete.