When I start the Cygwin bash shell with the Cygwin installed procedure the the SHELL env var is not exported. (sh started from within bash, or replacing bash in cygwin.bat, does not even have a SHELL variable).
The simple program below can check this: <<<<testshellenv.c>>>> #include <stdlib.h> int main () { char *shellenv; shellenv = getenv("SHELL"); printf ("SHELL is '%s'", shellenv); return 0; } <<<<end of testshellenv.c>>>> gcc -o testshellenv testshellenv.c If I run ./testshellenv I get: SHELL is '(null)' If I enter export SHELL at bash prompt then ./testgetenv returns: SHELL is '/bin/bash' Trying the same program on a remote linux machine gives '/bin/bash' directly, but this is no real proof as connecting to my local account with ssh also results in a bash shell where SHELL envvar is exported. I can't test on a local Linux machine, sorry. So my basic question is: is it intended behavior that SHELL env variable is not exported when cygwin bash is run locally? This problem arises from the fact that one of the latest cygwin specific GDB patch does make use of getenv("SHELL") and I was rather surprised by the null result that I got here. Pierre Muller Institut Charles Sadron 6,rue Boussingault F 67083 STRASBOURG CEDEX (France) mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone : (33)-3-88-41-40-07 Fax : (33)-3-88-41-40-99 -- Unsubscribe info: http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple Bug reporting: http://cygwin.com/bugs.html Documentation: http://cygwin.com/docs.html FAQ: http://cygwin.com/faq/