Re: [Help-bash] .bash_profile, .bash_login, and .profile

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 09:26:45AM -0700, Michael Convey wrote:
> Also, unlike the
> .profile file relative to the Bourne and Korn shells, the .bash_login file
> cannot be used in any capacity by csh, right?

Right.  No program reads ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bash_login except bash.
(Unless you wrote one that does.)

> Does it follow then that
> anything put into the .bash_login file could be put into either the
> .bash_profile or the .profile files and it would make no difference?

For your own sanity, it's best to pretend ~/.bash_login doesn't exist.
Don't create one.  If you have one, rename it to ~/.bash_profile.

> If all
> this is the case, then the .bash_login file is truly obsolete, right?

You may one day be called upon to diagnose someone else's login problems,
in which case it's useful to know all of the possible ways a thing can
be done (or undone).

> ???Haha, some of what the book says may be in error, but I've found much of
> it enriching and it has filled in some gaps. I use a variety of sources,
> but each provides only part of the picture, so I have to take what I can
> get???. =)

That's reasonable, but you really have to be careful not to pick up the
errors and bad habits of the author.  Some errors may be obvious, and
you can just skip over those, but some are extremely subtle.  Those are
the dangerous ones.