Reality check on bash behavior.

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 05:55:08PM +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:
> akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> > I need to check that my observations on bash invocation is correct.
> > In the bash man page it states that when the bash shell in invoked the
> > following three files are sourced: /etc/profile, ~/.bash_profile and
> > ~/.profile. My observation is that when .bash_profile is present
> > .profile is not sourced.
> > 
> > This is in important to us because we have the same user directories 
> > mounted on FC4 machines and OS X machines, On OS X machines it looks
> > like .profile is sourced even when a .bash_profile exists.
> > 
> > I just want to check that my sanity is still in place and I am seeing
> > what is really happening. I realize behavior on an OS X machine is off
> > topic on a fedora list.
> 
> Good question!
> 
> man bash says:
>    --noprofile
>       Do  not read either the system-wide startup file /etc/profile or
>       any  of  the  personal  initialization  files ~/.bash_profile,
>       ~/.bash_login,  or  ~/.profile.   By  default,  bash reads these
>       files when it is  invoked  as  a  login  shell  (see INVOCATION
>       below).
> then
>    When  bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-inter-
>    active shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes com-
>    mands  from  the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.  After reading
>    that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile,
>    in  that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that
>    exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be  used when  the
>    shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
> 
> So your observations are consistent with documented behaviour on Fedora.
> I understand that this is so users who are stuck with an earlier Bourne
> shell can put bash in their .profile, create a .bash_profile, and things
> will still work.
I agree with your analysis of the man bash on Fedora. I just wanted to
see if I was reading it correctly.
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't have access to an OS X machine.
> 
> It's possible that something in Apple's default /etc/profile or
> ~/.bash_profile is sourcing ~/.profile anyway. But a quick Google
> suggests that this is not the case, and bash on OS X is not supposed to
> run ~/.profile anyway if ~/.bash_profile exists. See, for example, Geoff
> Lane's comments in
> http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030825001724805
> 
Now the comments to refer to above have marginal relevance for the
following reason. The latest OS X 10.4 uses bash as its default shell and
I assure you that .profile is sourced even when .bash_profile exists.
But this is not an OS X list so I will not push the point. 
-- 

-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: (210)-999-7484