UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi , i added ls -F to .profile. and i need to do ./.profile for the effect to take effect BUT i didnt and YET the next day when i came to work and log in, the changes took effect. i am on aix.

please explain..

thanks

If you change your .profile, you have to ./.profile in the same session for the changes to take effect. If you open a new session, this is done automatically for you.

I do . ./.profile and this works. just make sure you do . ./.profile from your .profile directory.

hi, all.... i didnt ./profile.. but it works as well.. after doing a walkthrough, i was guessing along the line that doing a su - someuser will do the .profile?

thanks

OK, here is the full scoop on what is happening...

When a shell starts up it looks at its name. If it starts with a hyphen, it will act as a "login shell". Mostly this means that it will source some startup files in /etc and the user's home directory. For ksh, $HOME/.profile is a start-up file.

Do:
su
ps -fp $$
Since you just ran "su" your shell will be "sh" or something. Now exit the shell and try:
su - root
ps -fp $$

This time the name of the shell will be "-sh". So when this shell started up, it did indeed source the start-up scripts.

Every time that a shell starts it makes the test and sources the files if needed. When change .profile, you affect any new shell that is later started up with first character of its name set to hyphen. But pre-existing shells will need to manually source .profile.