Trying to understand profile in etc
 

Hi
I am trying to learn the purpose of certain files in /etc directory. In this context, I was looking at /etc/profile and want to understand its syntax. Can you point me to a manual or guide which explains this file in detail?

https://bencane.com/2013/09/16/under...and-etcbashrc/
there are a lot of info available, look for /etc/profile (or man bash)

As it's quite distribution-specific it's hard to point to any generic documentation.
In general it should set up the environment for any sh-like shell (like bash, dash or even zsh) for the whole system. The file is much older then Linux or even bash, it was originally meant for the Bourne shell.

I was also searching for a manual and what I think from my research is that in order to understand the /etc/profile file, I have to look (over internet) for individual terms, used in this file, like "appendpath", "TERMCAP" etc.

Just my two cents you will notice that in /etc directory, most of the files has Editable Text Configuration

"appendpath" sounds like a shell function that a distribution might have created to ease adding directories to PATH. (I've written similar functions in the past: "amend_path -append new-path; amend_path -prepend other-path", etc.)

What I've seen about TERMCAP is that it's used temporarily in "profile" to properly set the TERM variable according to the desired terminal type being used and deleted when no longer needed. Not sure where it's getting defined in the first place, though, but I would guess some part of the login process defines it.