[vox-tech] checking for interactive shell in bash

[Micah Cowan]

Peter Jay Salzman writes:
 > hola,
 > 
 > here's a snippet from my /etc/profile:

< snippet snipped :) >

 > my strategy is this:
 > 
 >    if (any kind of interactive shell at all) {
 >       do interactive shell stuff (consoles and xterms);
 > 
 >       if (any kind of non-login shell)
 >          do X-ish stuff (local and non-local);
 > 
 >       if (local non-login shell)
 >          do X-ish stuff (local only);
 >    }
 > 
 > the way i check for an interactive shell is by testing $TERM against
 > "dumb".   i do this because i noticed that scp spawns a shell on the
 > remote machine and sets TERM to "dumb".
 > 
 > but there are plenty of programs which spawn non-interactive shells, so
 > i'm thinking that testing against "dumb" isn't the best solution.  it's
 > specific to scp (i think).
 > 
 > is there a more general way to check for any kind of interactive shell
 > (both login and non-login)?
 > 
 > hope i got my terminology right...

Pete, I'm not sure I understand - /etc/profile and all the other bash
init scripts (e.g., ~/.bash_profile and ~/.bashrc) are never run under
a noninteractive invocation (cf. the man page), unless --login was
specified. There should be no need for this test.

-Micah