On 5 Mar, 2012, at 13:09 PM, Jim Clark wrote: > On Mar 5, 2012, at 12:49 PM, Justin C. Walker wrote: > >> To clarify this, I believe that the man page says that .bash_profile is >> checked for a login shell, and that .bashrc is checked for a non-login, >> interactive shell. >> >> I'm not at a 10.6 system right now to verify that, but it is the case on >> 10.7, and I have my "profile/rc" set up with that assumption on both 10.6 >> and 10.7. > > Thanks, Mr. Curmudgeon ;-) > > That is indeed what I read in the man page, but my intuitive sense is that > Terminal should open a "non-login, interactive shell" — after all, I am able > to start entering UNIX commands interactively, and the shell does not prompt > for a login. But when I actually try it out, the contents of .bashrc have no > effect in Terminal/bash, but the contents of .bash_profile are processed. I > conclude that something about a deeper understanding of Mac OS X and/or UNIX > is eluding me.
I think your confusion is in the use of the term "login". Terminal starts a login shell for each window/tab that it opens, so your intuition needs a little polishing :-} Think of Terminal as a glorified xterm, in that all the windows belong to one Terminal, rather than each xterm owning one window. Login shells are represented (e.g., in 'ps' listings) with a leading "-" in the command name; and if you check a full "ps" listing, you'll see that the "parent" shell in each window (i.e., for each (pseudo)tty) has such a tag, and typically, no others do. HTH Justin -- Justin C. Walker Curmudgeon-at-large -- Network, n., Difference between work charged for and work done -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org
