zsh: command not found: ls

Question

I'm having a rather strange problem with zsh. When I start up my shell, everything - functions, environment vars, aliases, etc. - all work fine. I've created the following function and sourced it in zsh:

clean()
{
    path=/tmp    
    for i in ${path}/*; do
      echo $i
    done
}

Running clean in the terminal works as expected, in that it prints out all the files in /tmp/. Afterward, however, trying any command - for example, ls - produces this:

zsh: command not found: ls

I have several other functions that work just fine, which leads me to believe that somehow, that loop is causing the problem. At any rate, this is very frustrating and I would sincerely appreciate the community's eyes. Thanks!

Answer 1

The problem is assigning the path variable - since zsh has that variable reserved (in addition to PATH), overwriting it removes the ability for the shell to find any command.

The correct answer, of course, is to use a variable other than $path:

local_path=/tmp    
for i in ${local_path}/*; do
  echo $i
done

Answer 2

I guess it overwrites the variable path, which is the one used to find commands. That's why it doesn't find commands anymore.