according to less manual,
!command Execute the shell command with $SHELL.
I have an alias pbcopy='nc localhost 2224'
I tested but get
!pbcopy
/bin/bash: pbcopy: command not found
!done (press RETURN)
What I tried
put alias in .bash_profile, .bashrc, .profile, none of them works
!source .bash_profile in less. not working
!alias pbcopy='nc localhost 2224'
I really need some help to understand this.
aliases are not commands.
Your shell is likely not loading them.
And if it is loading them they aren't available in non-interactive shells by default so they still won't work without you explicitly turning aliases on.
Either create that as a shell function or as a shell script in your $PATH.
It is also almost certainly the case that each !cmd invocation is started in a new shell so you cannot carry assignments, variables, functions, etc. from one to the next.
Related
Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
I've used a number of different *nix-based systems of the years, and it seems like every flavor of Bash I use has a different algorithm for deciding which startup scripts to run. For the purposes of tasks like setting up environment variables and aliases and printing startup messages (e.g. MOTDs), which startup script is the appropriate place to do these?
What's the difference between putting things in .bashrc, .bash_profile, and .environment? I've also seen other files such as .login, .bash_login, and .profile; are these ever relevant? What are the differences in which ones get run when logging in physically, logging in remotely via ssh, and opening a new terminal window? Are there any significant differences across platforms (including Mac OS X (and its Terminal.app) and Cygwin Bash)?
The main difference with shell config files is that some are only read by "login" shells (eg. when you login from another host, or login at the text console of a local unix machine). these are the ones called, say, .login or .profile or .zlogin (depending on which shell you're using).
Then you have config files that are read by "interactive" shells (as in, ones connected to a terminal (or pseudo-terminal in the case of, say, a terminal emulator running under a windowing system). these are the ones with names like .bashrc, .tcshrc, .zshrc, etc.
bash complicates this in that .bashrc is only read by a shell that's both interactive and non-login, so you'll find most people end up telling their .bash_profile to also read .bashrc with something like
[[ -r ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
Other shells behave differently - eg with zsh, .zshrc is always read for an interactive shell, whether it's a login one or not.
The manual page for bash explains the circumstances under which each file is read. Yes, behaviour is generally consistent between machines.
.profile is simply the login script filename originally used by /bin/sh. bash, being generally backwards-compatible with /bin/sh, will read .profile if one exists.
That's simple. It's explained in man bash:
/bin/bash
The bash executable
/etc/profile
The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.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
Login shells are the ones that are read one you login (so, they are not executed when merely starting up xterm, for example). There are other ways to login. For example using an X display manager. Those have other ways to read and export environment variables at login time.
Also read the INVOCATION chapter in the manual. It says "The following paragraphs describe how bash executes its startup files.", i think that's a spot-on :) It explains what an "interactive" shell is too.
Bash does not know about .environment. I suspect that's a file of your distribution, to set environment variables independent of the shell that you drive.
Classically, ~/.profile is used by Bourne Shell, and is probably supported by Bash as a legacy measure. Again, ~/.login and ~/.cshrc were used by C Shell - I'm not sure that Bash uses them at all.
The ~/.bash_profile would be used once, at login. The ~/.bashrc script is read every time a shell is started. This is analogous to /.cshrc for C Shell.
One consequence is that stuff in ~/.bashrc should be as lightweight (minimal) as possible to reduce the overhead when starting a non-login shell.
I believe the ~/.environment file is a compatibility file for Korn Shell.
I found information about .bashrc and .bash_profile here to sum it up:
.bash_profile is executed when you
login. Stuff you put in there might be
your PATH and other important
environment variables.
.bashrc is used for non login shells.
I'm not sure what that means. I know
that RedHat
executes it everytime you start
another shell (su to this user or
simply calling bash again) You might
want to put aliases in there but again
I am not sure what that means. I
simply ignore it myself.
.profile is the equivalent of
.bash_profile for the root. I think
the name is changed to let other
shells (csh, sh, tcsh) use it as well.
(you don't need one as a user)
There is also .bash_logout wich
executes at, yeah good guess...logout.
You might want to stop deamons or even
make a little housekeeping . You can
also add "clear" there if you want to
clear the screen when you log out.
Also there is a complete follow up on each of the configurations files here
These are probably even distro.-dependant, not all distros choose to have each configuraton with them and some have even more. But when they have the same name, they usualy include the same content.
According to Josh Staiger, Mac OS X's Terminal.app actually runs a login shell rather than a non-login shell by default for each new terminal window, calling .bash_profile instead of .bashrc.
He recommends:
Most of the time you don’t want to maintain two separate config files
for login and non-login shells — when you set a PATH, you want it to
apply to both. You can fix this by sourcing .bashrc from your
.bash_profile file, then putting PATH and common settings in .bashrc.
To do this, add the following lines to .bash_profile:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi
Now when you login to your
machine from a console .bashrc will be called.
A good place to look at is the man page of bash. Here's an online version. Look for "INVOCATION" section.
I have used Debian-family distros which appear to execute .profile, but not .bash_profile,
whereas RHEL derivatives execute .bash_profile before .profile.
It seems to be a mess when you have to set up environment variables to work in any Linux OS.
I am on MacOS. I recently upgraded to Mojave. I'm running the Homebrew version of GNU bash, version 4.4.23(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin17.5.0).
When I open a new bash shell by issuing the bash command, I get the following error every time I issue a new command:
bash: parse_git_branch: command not found
The error is getting generated from the following line in my .bashrc file that customizes my command line with the git :
export PS1="\[\033[32m\]iMac5K# \[\033[33;1m\]\w:\[\033[m\]\[\033[33m\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\] "
(Note: my .bashrc file is sourced by my .bash_profile file.)
The parse_git_brach is in my .bashrc file so I'm not sure why I am getting this error. Even after I manually source .bashrc, I still get the error.
Issuing which bash yields:
/usr/local/bin/bash
Thanks.
When you just run bash without -l or -i, it doesn't execute .bash_profile or .bashrc itself, but only honors variables it received through the environment.
When you export a variable, you're exposing it to child processes... through the environment.
So, your child shell receives the PS1 definition, but it doesn't receive the function that PS1 requires!
You have some options here:
Export the function alongside the PS1 definition that uses it. That is, export -f parse_git_branch. This has an important caveat in that only shells which read exported functions (which is to say, in practice, bash) will get any benefit from this fix.
Stop exporting the PS1. That is, just take the export off the line PS1='...'.
Set BASH_ENV=$HOME/.bashrc and ENV=$HOME/.bashrc, which will instruct even noninteractive shells to run .bashrc (of course, this can change the way scripts execute, and is thus at a risk for causing bugs in other software; moreover, the latter means your .bashrc needs to be written to be safe for non-bash shells).
I've got a makefile for installing my personal repo of config files, part of which is compiling my emacs scripts:
compile:
emacs -batch --eval "(progn (load \"~/.emacs\") (byte-recompile-directory \"~/.emacs.d\" 0))"
The problem is, on OSX, I have an alias called "emacs" that points to the Emacs.app binary for use in a terminal, this is defined in my ~/.bash_profile.
Now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to get the shell that Make is calling to read a startup file to load that alias, so that compilation step always fails.
Does anyone know how to do this?
.bash_profile is only read by interactive login shells. Exported environment variables set in it are inherited through the process environment, which means that these settings are generally available to all programs the user starts (if bash is indeed the login shell, of course).
No such inheritance happens for aliases, though. Bash supports exported functions, but that's an obscure feature which can easily break other programs (for example, those which assume that environment variable values do not contain newlines). If you go that route, you may have to use .bashrc instead, to make sure that these functions are exported by interactive bash shells which are not login shells.
I expected the easiest solution is to put a directory like $HOME/bin on the PATH (in .bash_profile or .bashrc, whatever works best) and put an emacs wrapper script into that directory which invokes the actual binary using exec /path/to/Emacs.app "$#" (or maybe just a symbolic link would do).
That is very strange. Aliases are not exported to sub-shells, and the .bash_profile script is only run by interactive shells: make doesn't invoke an interactive shell (by default). So, it's hard to understand how the shell make invokes would see that alias based on the information you've provided.
Maybe you set the BASH_ENV shell variable somewhere? You should never do that, unless you really know what you're doing.
Maybe you reset make's .SHELLFLAGS variable to force a login shell? You shouldn't to that either.
Anyway, you can try using command which avoids aliases etc. Unfortunately make doesn't know this is a shell-built in, so you have to convince it to run a shell. This will be fixed in the next release of GNU make but Apple will never ship that.
compile:
command emacs -batch --eval "(progn (load \"~/.emacs\") (byte-recompile-directory \"~/.emacs.d\" 0))" && true
I have the following lines in my .bashrc which I would like to get executed upon logging in through ssh.
csh
source /x/y/.cshrc
source /x/y/z/sourceme
But the problem is that only the first command is being executed correctly.
(csh prompt is coming up)
The following source command is not effected.
I noticed that there are some errors which are thrown from bash (not csh) for the 'source' command
I read somewhere that this may be due to .bashrc getting executed multiple times. And source commands trying to get executed in bash itself rather than csh.
I want all the three commands to be executed one after other upon log-in. how can I do that? I tried .bash_profile .bash_login etc. Also I don't have write access to /etc/profile
The "commands" are interpreted by the bash shell. They aren't bytes to be fed to the terminal. What happens is that csh runs interactively, and once it exits bash will source the two (presumably csh) script files.
It looks like you're simply trying to change your shell to csh (why, I have no idea). Have you tried using chsh for that?
If you want to run these commands in csh, move them to your .cshrc.
A word of caution, though; using csh for absolutely anything raises the question, do you really think you know what you are doing? Why?
source is a "bashism", that is to say it won't work in other shells. Use . instead.
Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
I've used a number of different *nix-based systems of the years, and it seems like every flavor of Bash I use has a different algorithm for deciding which startup scripts to run. For the purposes of tasks like setting up environment variables and aliases and printing startup messages (e.g. MOTDs), which startup script is the appropriate place to do these?
What's the difference between putting things in .bashrc, .bash_profile, and .environment? I've also seen other files such as .login, .bash_login, and .profile; are these ever relevant? What are the differences in which ones get run when logging in physically, logging in remotely via ssh, and opening a new terminal window? Are there any significant differences across platforms (including Mac OS X (and its Terminal.app) and Cygwin Bash)?
The main difference with shell config files is that some are only read by "login" shells (eg. when you login from another host, or login at the text console of a local unix machine). these are the ones called, say, .login or .profile or .zlogin (depending on which shell you're using).
Then you have config files that are read by "interactive" shells (as in, ones connected to a terminal (or pseudo-terminal in the case of, say, a terminal emulator running under a windowing system). these are the ones with names like .bashrc, .tcshrc, .zshrc, etc.
bash complicates this in that .bashrc is only read by a shell that's both interactive and non-login, so you'll find most people end up telling their .bash_profile to also read .bashrc with something like
[[ -r ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
Other shells behave differently - eg with zsh, .zshrc is always read for an interactive shell, whether it's a login one or not.
The manual page for bash explains the circumstances under which each file is read. Yes, behaviour is generally consistent between machines.
.profile is simply the login script filename originally used by /bin/sh. bash, being generally backwards-compatible with /bin/sh, will read .profile if one exists.
That's simple. It's explained in man bash:
/bin/bash
The bash executable
/etc/profile
The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.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
Login shells are the ones that are read one you login (so, they are not executed when merely starting up xterm, for example). There are other ways to login. For example using an X display manager. Those have other ways to read and export environment variables at login time.
Also read the INVOCATION chapter in the manual. It says "The following paragraphs describe how bash executes its startup files.", i think that's a spot-on :) It explains what an "interactive" shell is too.
Bash does not know about .environment. I suspect that's a file of your distribution, to set environment variables independent of the shell that you drive.
Classically, ~/.profile is used by Bourne Shell, and is probably supported by Bash as a legacy measure. Again, ~/.login and ~/.cshrc were used by C Shell - I'm not sure that Bash uses them at all.
The ~/.bash_profile would be used once, at login. The ~/.bashrc script is read every time a shell is started. This is analogous to /.cshrc for C Shell.
One consequence is that stuff in ~/.bashrc should be as lightweight (minimal) as possible to reduce the overhead when starting a non-login shell.
I believe the ~/.environment file is a compatibility file for Korn Shell.
I found information about .bashrc and .bash_profile here to sum it up:
.bash_profile is executed when you
login. Stuff you put in there might be
your PATH and other important
environment variables.
.bashrc is used for non login shells.
I'm not sure what that means. I know
that RedHat
executes it everytime you start
another shell (su to this user or
simply calling bash again) You might
want to put aliases in there but again
I am not sure what that means. I
simply ignore it myself.
.profile is the equivalent of
.bash_profile for the root. I think
the name is changed to let other
shells (csh, sh, tcsh) use it as well.
(you don't need one as a user)
There is also .bash_logout wich
executes at, yeah good guess...logout.
You might want to stop deamons or even
make a little housekeeping . You can
also add "clear" there if you want to
clear the screen when you log out.
Also there is a complete follow up on each of the configurations files here
These are probably even distro.-dependant, not all distros choose to have each configuraton with them and some have even more. But when they have the same name, they usualy include the same content.
According to Josh Staiger, Mac OS X's Terminal.app actually runs a login shell rather than a non-login shell by default for each new terminal window, calling .bash_profile instead of .bashrc.
He recommends:
Most of the time you don’t want to maintain two separate config files
for login and non-login shells — when you set a PATH, you want it to
apply to both. You can fix this by sourcing .bashrc from your
.bash_profile file, then putting PATH and common settings in .bashrc.
To do this, add the following lines to .bash_profile:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi
Now when you login to your
machine from a console .bashrc will be called.
A good place to look at is the man page of bash. Here's an online version. Look for "INVOCATION" section.
I have used Debian-family distros which appear to execute .profile, but not .bash_profile,
whereas RHEL derivatives execute .bash_profile before .profile.
It seems to be a mess when you have to set up environment variables to work in any Linux OS.