How to show and access .bash_profile file from finder

PATH is only needed for lookups when you don't provide an absolute path. While

vi .bash_profile

might not work, because the shell doesn't know where vi is, the following would:

/usr/bin/vi .bash_profile

(Assuming the vi actually is in /usr/bin/).

Manually type the path ~/.bash_profile into any text editor, or tell finder to show hidden files and navigate there. Also if terminal is having problems you should still be able to ctrl-c out of the messages and cd around the use vim to fix it.