[vox-tech] checking for interactive shell in bash

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Micah Cowan <micah@cowan.name> 
> 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.
 
that was my understanding, but my system begs to differ.

as a test, i put

   echo "blah"

in /etc/profile.  i then went to lucifer and scp'd something from
satan.  i saw "blah".  you can try it for yourself.

if you have an explanation for why i saw "blah" during scp, i'd be all
ears!  i just assumed the man page was wrong (it happens).

pete


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