I am not sure if you are using the export option. You almost certainly have spaces, and you shouldn't, according to the following transcript:
pax> PATH= /bin bash: /bin: is a directory pax> PATH= /bin/sbin bash: /bin/sbin: No such file or directory
The first is because you temporarily set the path to an empty line when you try to start this directory. This is because you can do things like:
pax> xyzzy=1 pax> echo $xyzzy 1 pax> xyzzy=2 bash -c 'echo $xyzzy' 2 pax> echo $xyzzy 1
In other words, this is a way to change the environment variable for one command and automatically return it after the command completes.
The second case is simply because there is no /bin/sbin directory. Therefore, he discovers that before he complains that you are trying to start the directory.
Setting a variable in bash is a non-whitespace thing (unless you have spaces in the directory names, in which case they must be specified). In addition, they should be divided into two parts. Therefore, you are looking for things like:
PATH=/bin PATH=/bin:/sbin PATH="/bin:/sbin:/directory with spaces in it:$HOME/bin"
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