what does the hyphen mean?

linuxtyh · 12-09-2008, 03:46 AM

what does the hyphen mean which is before the "bash"

linuxtyh@linuxtyh:/root$ ps f
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
23471 tty2 S 0:00 -bash
17169 pts/2 S 0:00 su linuxtyh
17170 pts/2 R 0:00 \_ bash
17588 pts/2 R+ 0:00 \_ ps f
linuxtyh@linuxtyh:/root$ ps ux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
linuxtyh 17169 0.0 0.0 3876 1172 pts/2 S 16:38 0:00 su linuxtyh
linuxtyh 17170 0.0 0.2 6360 3588 pts/2 R 16:38 0:00 bash
linuxtyh 17691 0.0 0.0 2644 1000 pts/2 R+ 16:46 0:00 ps ux
linuxtyh 23471 0.0 0.2 6352 3560 tty2 S 09:52 0:00 -bash

colucix · 12-09-2008, 04:37 AM

It means it is a login shell. From the bash man page:

Code:

INVOCATION
   A  login  shell is one whose first character of argument zero is a -,
   or one started with the --login option.

linuxtyh · 12-09-2008, 05:26 AM

Thank you very much for your comment

Quote:

Originally Posted by colucix

It means it is a login shell. From the bash man page:

Code:

INVOCATION
   A  login  shell is one whose first character of argument zero is a -,
   or one started with the --login option.

arunmathew1984 · 12-10-2008, 06:46 AM

Thank you for the info colucix. That's something new I learnt today.

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