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To: Jason Wells <jcwells@u.washington.edu>
cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Terminals and environments 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 01 Mar 1997 15:59:01 PST."
             <3318C2C5.685C@u.washington.edu> 
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 1997 18:19:41 -0800
Message-ID: <18800.857269181@time.cdrom.com>
From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org
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> This tends to be two questions in one. I gather that they are closely
> related, therefore they both appear in one posting.

bash's startup behavior is as follows:

	1. If the shell is a login shell, .bash_profile or (if that doesn't
	   exist) .profile is read.

	2. If the shell is not a login shell, .bashrc (if it exists) is
	   read.

For that reason, you want to set up your environment in one of
the following ways:

	1. If you wish to preserve login shell behavior for all xterms,
	   simply run them with the -ls option.  This won't help in all
	   shell startup situations, but it will fix your desktop.

	2. Have your .bash_profile include your .bashrc explicitly and
	   put all your aliases and stuff in the .bashrc.

#2 is the approach I use, and the only thing in my .bash_profile is
this:

	# Do login-shell specific things, like change tty settings, here
	# ...
	#
	. $HOME/.bashrc

					Jordan