Guys and Gals,

I've created a .bash_colr file to load some simple colors. It's just got lines like

Black='\e[0;30m' # Black
Red='\e[0;31m' # Red
Green='\e[0;32m' # Green
Yellow='\e[0;33m' # Yellow

etc. But when I do a ./.bash_colr the values of Black, Red, Green and Yellow are not fixed. For example, I do an echo "$Red" and get back a blank line. I want to create a file like the .bashrc file which is read by the .profile and defines the shell colors. Is the possible??

Use
to load it.

Or
does the same thing.

Place one of those in your .bashrc

"./" executes the file as a subprocess. Any variables (environment or not) that it creates will be lost as soon as it exits.

"." or "source" executes the statements in the file in the current process. Any variables that it creates will persist after it's done.

So if you want to keep the variables set up in the script, you would want to use ". ~/.bash_color" or "source ~/.bash_color", NOT "./.bash_color" or "~/.bash_color".

Thank you, most helpful. Your explanations, CoralFang and SuicidalEggroll, were good. I will be able to use the info elsewhere.

I have a second issue. If I execute . ~/.profile in an existing shell (which in turn invokes . ~/.bash_colr), everything works fine and the colors are defined in the shell. If, however, I click on the terminal window to start a shell, the colors are not defined. It's clear that . ~/,bash_colr was not executed by doing an echo "$Red". What might be going on?

Let me ask a follow up. When I do an 'env' in the shell (after .bash_colr has successfully run), the colors Red, Blue, etc are not listed in the env-vars. In a certain sense this makes sense since they are not define by 'set' but the question is, 'Where are they stored?' 'Where do I have access to them?'

I believe .profile is only sourced once when you first log in, so for any changes to take effect you'll need to log out and back in.

.bashrc, on the other hand, is sourced every time you open a terminal, so if you put it there it would take effect the next time you open a terminal.

As for env, you're not creating environment variables, so they won't show up in env. If you want to make them environment variables you would need to put "export" in front, eg:
export Black='\e[0;30m'

Without export, they're just regular variables in the shell session, which means you will only have access to them within that shell. Subshells or subprocesses will not inherit the parent's regular variables, only environment variables.

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SuicidalEggroll, thank you for your expalantions. They were helpful.