On 8/18/23 8:33 AM, Rick Troth wrote:
About profiling, I regularly setPS1='\$ ' which for BASH renders a
prompt as "$" for normal users but as "#" for superuser. It's convenient.
ZSH shows that as "\$" and does not change it when I change UID.
Zsh has similar behavior.
Zsh uses different escape sequences for the prompt PS1 et al. than Bash
does.
Check out the PROMPT EXPANSION of the zshmis (or zshall) manual pages.
Look into %# in the Zsh prompt as it will give you # for root and % for
non-root.
This is *not* a slam on ZSH, just an observation.
There are many differences between Zsh and Bash. Prompt (PS1 et al.) is
just one that surprises a lot of people.
In search of better profiling, /etc/zprofile should source /etc/profile
and then override as needed. (PS1 being a prime example, eh?)
Or ~.zprofile sourcing ~.profile, same logic and rationale.
I want to agree, but I can't. I've seen too many differences across too
many platforms and too many Unix (like) OSs. Getting consistent
behavior can become very tricky and you quickly end up away from the
purity that -- I think -- that you are talking about.
There are two levels: profiling which should happen when you sign on
(once) and "resource config" which gets invoked every time a program
starts.
Eh....
The water starts to get murky when you start using the same shell for
both interactive (ostensibly with a TTY) and non-interactive (ostensibly
without a TTY) use. E.g. the former is your login shell and the latter
is a script using the same shell. Sometimes you want different
configurations of that shell based on it's use case.
Then you get into even more esoteric things like is your interactive
shell a login shell or a non-login shell (possibly started from inside
your login shell).
Aside: Some people start additional interactive non-login shells from
their interactive login shell as a way to divide command history or have
different features for a task at hand. E.g. in the long process of
working on something that takes many hours and need a shell briefly to
fix something / unclog a printer, then start an interactive non-login
shell, do the maintenance work therein, then exit back to the original
shell without significantly altering your outer shell's command history.
Think something along the lines of an "interrupt" button on copiers.
What ""profile to use when can be complicated.
RC scripts for shells should look for a sacred "I have been profiled"
environment variable and source appropriate profiles if it is not set.
That's why there are ~/.bash_profile exists and is separate from
~/.bash_login exists and is separate from ~/.profile exists and is
separate from ~/.bashrc.
The shell maintainers intention for the different files often gets
corrupted by distributors who have one file include another file.
I've not had enough coffee to remember which is for what purpose. But I
am confident that they are separated on purpose.
But RC scripts should not completely re-profile because they (the RC
scripts) get sourced every time a shell starts.
Hence ~/.bash_login vs ~/.bashrc.
RC scripts of interest in this context would be ~.zshrc and ~.bashrc (or
/etc/zshrc and /etc/bashrc if you're the sysadmin).
Zsh has similar separation of files like Bash does. But mostly* with
different names.
Many shells in the Bourn shell family; Bourn, Bash, Zsh, will also read
~/.profile and /etc/profile as a way of being backwards compatible and
cross shell compatible (for a given value of compatible).
#needMoreCoffee
Does this make sense?
I started the Chicory collection when I worked in academia because I
didn't want to be on [name your platform] and not have various tools.
BASH was one. (I didn't know about ZSH in those days.)
It has grown and gotten honed. Most open source packages build really
easily. (Not as easy on USS, but that's a whole nutha story.) The
collection includes *five* shells, currently ...
* bash-5.2.15
* zsh-5.9
* pdksh-5.2.14
* dash-0.5.12
* tcsh-6.24.10
So that's BASH, ZSH, KSH, DASH, and a C-shell variant. (Long story about
C-shell. Let's just say, you don't wanna.)
I assume that you're using Public Domain Korn Shell because Korn Shell
proper source code / license wasn't available when you started that
list. I learned a few years ago that Korn Shell proper is now available.
--
Grant. . . .
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