'ls' broken nothing comes out

[calador]

I got on my linux today and find that typing 'ls' no longer outputs anything to the screen.
I was playing around with $PATH the other day and think it may be involved. However, I do not get any errors that 'ls' is not found.

When I type $PATH I get:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:.:No such file or directory
please help,

[smolloy]

Try

echo $PATH

then try

which ls

Tell us the results.

By the way, are you really sure that there's something in the directory you're trying to list? Have you tried

ls -a

?

[Jonathan183]

try

/bin/ls

also try

alias

Ed: also does

sudo ls

or

su -
ls

work ?

[calador]

k,
echo $PATH gives:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11

which ls gives:
usr/bin/ls

ls -a gives nothing, but I am sure there is something in the directory, because I have ftp'd in to run 'ls' and sadly, I am working today, getting around by typing 'vi .' to see what is in the current working directory....

Jonathan,
/bin/ls returns nothing

alias give:
alias d= 'dir'
alias dir='/bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS --format=vertical'
alias ls='/bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS'
alias v='vdir'
alias vdir='/bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS --format=long'

sudo ls returns nothing (I am logged in as root)

su -ls returns nothing

thanks for the feedback

[smolloy]

What happens with

/usr/bin/ls

?

[calador]

hi,
/usr/bin/ls
outputs nothing...