[mqymouse]

I'm very new to all of this, so bear with me.

I have read in two different places two different things to do with your aliases in the bash shell. One says to put your aliases in the .profile. The other source indicates that all aliases belong in the ~/.bashrc file instead.

So, I've added my aliases to ~/.bashrc, and they don't work.

I've copied the same aliases to the .profile, and they work as directed. But I thought that .profile was for higher level commands, not user-specific commands.

Is this proper? Which source is correct? Or does it really matter as long as it works?

On an unrelated note, is there a bash equivalent to the rehash command from csh shells?

Thanks,
Michael

[mqymouse]

Further digging has discovered a bashrc file in the /etc directory. Does this file conflict with the ~/.bashrc file?

[mqymouse]

Today is a day of exploration:

I ran ps, and it showed me

Code:
 PID  TT  STAT      TIME COMMAND
 421  p1  Ss+    0:00.07 bash
1321 std  S      0:00.50 -bash

Does this mean there are two shells running?

[suthercd]

mgymouse-

When you create a .bashrc file in your home directory, that is read instead of the /etc/bashrc file.

Using the Terminal, you are in a non-login interactive shell. Each Terminal window you opens is another of the same type of shell. These read .bashrc if it is present, /etc/bashrc if it is not.

~/.bash_profile, .bash_login, and .profile are looked for, in that order, when a bash login shell is started. When the first of the three is found, it is read and bash stops looking. A login interactive shell is an authenticated shell and this type of shell is used by the system for a variety of housekeeping, setup, configuration tasks. When you login to OS X, a login shell is started and the first of there files is read.

Here is my .bash_profile

Code:
export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant/apache-ant-1.6.1
export CATALINA_HOME=/Library/Tomcat
export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/Home
export CVSROOT=/usr/local/cvsrep
export PYTHONPATH=/Users/xxx/bin/py
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/bin:/Library/Tcl/bin:/Users/xxx/bin
PS1="\W $"

. .bashrc

You see the last line calls my .bashrc file. All of my path info is available to the system.

My .bashrc file

Code:
PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'

alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}'
alias prj='cd /Volumes/Data/Projects'
alias lm='ls -la | more'
alias lt='ls -atrl | more'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias /='cd /'
alias dsk='cd ~/Desktop'
alias lcl='cd /usr/local'
alias jvd='cd ~/Documents/Java_code'
alias jvr='cd ~/Documents/Java_code/JavaRanch'
alias ls='ls -G'

shopt -s histappend
shopt -s cdspell
shopt -s cdable_vars

Info here is what I have set up for use in the Terminal or with X11.

OSXFAQ has a great multi part OS X Unix tutorial that is very comprehensive and one I that really helped me.

HTH
Craig

[Kristoff]

hnmmm.... I use TCSH and Fred Sanchez's method of setting that stuff, so mine are in:

~/Library/init/tcsh/aliases.mine

and the env vars go in:

~/Library/init/tcsh/environment.mine

[mqymouse]

Thanks for the advice. I followed your instructions for the .bash_profile which passes on to the .bashrc and it all works well for me. I'll forego the .profile and using the /etc/bashrc file to set aliases.

I'm learning very slowly, but it's all really cool.

Thank you for your help,
Michael

[suthercd]

Good the hear. Just to clarify, if you create ~/.profile (or .~/bash_profile or ~/bash_input) the default /etc/profile will not be read by bash. You can enter 'cat /etc/profile' to list the contents of that file and use that to make certain you have are aware of the PATH info etc. that was included in the default file.

Craig