[rhn-users] echo ! in ~/.bashrc

[Corné Beerse]

somnath123s wrote:

> hey folks!!
> 
> i found the following statement in book:
> ========================================================================
> "Never put any command that may echo something to the screen in the
> ~/.bashrc file; such command belong in the ~/,bash_profile file only."
> ========================================================================
> 
> 
> 		why?
> 


~/.bashrc is called for every shell and hence the echo runs in every shell. This 
includes all shell-scripts too. These used all over the place and hence can 
cause strange behavoure. You can see that if you put the next line in your 
~/.bashrc:

####
echo "This is ~/.bashrc, called from $0 at `date`" >> ~/.bashrc.log
####

It is the same with ~/.cshrc, however that causes less problems since the csh is 
used less often in scripting.

Only scripts that use the -f option to start the shell ("#!/bin/bash -f" as 
first line) donnot source ~/.bashrc and are not logged with the above line.



CBee