Setting ENV Variables

carlosinfl · 02-26-2013, 12:31 PM

I've used a few distributions and I've never grasped the difference in BASH between .bashrc & .bash_profile. I find myself confused on RHEL based distributions as to which should be edited if I need to set a specific variable for that user. Is there a difference between the two and which would you set a common user env. variable?

Kustom42 · 02-26-2013, 02:26 PM

You can set them in either. There are reasons why one is used over the other but if you look at the actual bash_profile file it sources bashrc:

Code:

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
        . ~/.bashrc
fi

It really doesnt matter which one you put it in, the only thing to worry about is that if there is an /etc/bashrc it will override your .bashrc settings.

---------- Post added 02-26-13 at 01:27 PM ----------

People usually recommend using .bash_profile

carlosinfl · 02-26-2013, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kustom42

[/COLOR]People usually recommend using .bash_profile

Thank you very much!

unSpawn · 02-26-2013, 09:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carlosinfl

I've used a few distributions and I've never grasped the difference in BASH between .bashrc & .bash_profile.

'man bash' is quite specific about what gets read when and in which order:

Code:

 
Bash invoked as "/bin/bash"
I. interactive login shell:
/etc/profile
  + /etc/inputrc
  + /etc/profile.d/*.sh
~/.bash_profile
  + ~/.bashrc
        + /etc/bashrc
  + ~/.bash_login
  + ~/.inputrc
~/.bash_login

II. interactive non-login shell or non-interactive:
~/.bashrc
  + /etc/bashrc
  + /etc/profile.d/*.sh