Unix|Bash: about .bashrc, .bash_profile, .profile, /etc/profile, etc/bash.bashrc and others

Bash: about .bashrc, .bash_profile, .profile, /etc/profile, etc/bash.bashrc and others

Bash: about .bashrc, .bash_profile, .profile, /etc/profile, etc/bash.bashrc and others

3 October, 2005 - 17:08

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• bash
• linux

• slippens's blog
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Ever wondered what's the difference between ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, /etc/profile, /etc/bash.bashrc (and maybe others) and what their purposes are? I do.

Some interesting excerpts from the bash manpage:

When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes commands 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.
...
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc, if these files exist. This may be inhibited by using the --norc option. The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and execute commands from file instead of /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.