Re: Which files do what: .bashrc and friends

[tyler <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

"Dotan Cohen" <dotancohen@gmail.com> writes:

> On a Debian-based system running KDE 3.5.10 I see several files that
> are used when logging in / starting a Konsole:
>
> .profile
> .bash_history
> .bash_logout
> .bash_profile
> .bashrc
>
> Thanks in advance. If there are any good docs that explain this, I'd
> love to see them. I have not been able to google anything recent that
> is relevant to Debian.

man bash answers most of your questions:

FILES
       /bin/bash
              The bash executable
       /etc/profile
              The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
       /etc/bash.bashrc
              The systemwide per-interactive-shell startup file
       /etc/bash.logout
              The systemwide login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
       ~/.bash_profile
              The personal initialization file, executed for login shells
       ~/.bashrc
              The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
       ~/.bash_logout
              The individual login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
       ~/.inputrc
              Individual readline initialization file

I believe .profile and .bash_profile are synonyms, so you'd only use one
or the other. .bash_history holds your command line history, and is not
used for runtime configuration. I'm not sure what shell scripts run from
another application do. I would guess they stuff done in .bashrc would
affect them, but not stuff in  *profile.

Cheers,

Tyler