UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

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INVOCATION
       A login shell is one whose first character of argument zero is a -,  or
       one started with the --login option.

       An  interactive  shell  is one started without non-option arguments and
       without the -c option whose standard input and error are both connected
       to  terminals  (as determined by isatty(3)), or one started with the -i
       option.  PS1 is set and $- includes i if bash is interactive,  allowing
       a shell script or a startup file to test this state.

       The  following paragraphs describe how bash executes its startup files.
       If any of the files exist but cannot be read, bash  reports  an  error.
       Tildes are expanded in file names as described below under Tilde Expan-
       sion in the EXPANSION section.

       When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a  non-inter-
       active  shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes com-
       mands 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 a login shell exits, bash reads and  executes  commands  from  the
       file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.

       When  an  interactive  shell that is not a login shell is started, bash
       reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists.   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
       ~/.bashrc.

       When  bash  is  started  non-interactively,  to run a shell script, for
       example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment, expands
       its  value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value as the name
       of a file to read and execute.  Bash behaves as if the  following  com-
       mand were executed:
              if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi
       but  the  value of the PATH variable is not used to search for the file
       name.
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