Bash aka The Solution for Everything — The ''Special Files''
These quick tips will help you understand how bash runs startup files.
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Join For FreeIn bash, the shell reads one or more startup files. Here's the details about what's what and which is run when.
- /etc/profile is executed automatically at login.
- The file from the list of ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile are then executed at login.
- ~/.bashrc is executed by every non-login shell, but if sh is used to invoke bash it reads the $ENV for POSIX compatability.
For reference, the ~ symbol is used in place of the user directory. One way to check this out yourself is to change directory to ~ with a cd ~
in the shell, then type pwd
which will give the current directory. You'll find that it is something like /Users/adron
where instead of my name it'd be your user name.
When invoking the shell, you can also skip the ~/.bashrc or otherwise change the way bash starts up with the following options.
bash --init-file theFileToUseInstead
or--rcfile
instead of ~/.bashrc.bash --norc
which is similar to invoking withsh
, which will use $ENV.bash --noprofile
will prevent /etc/profile or any other personal startup files. This will provide a pretty baseline bash shell for use.
Until next time, happy bash code thrashing!
Published at DZone with permission of Adron Hall, DZone MVB. See the original article here.
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