(features.info)Invoking Bash

Invoking Bash
=============

   In addition to the single-character shell command-line options
(Note: The Set Builtin.), there are several multi-character options
that you can use.  These options must appear on the command line before
the single-character options to be recognized.

`-norc'
     Don't read the `~/.bashrc' initialization file in an interactive
     shell.  This is on by default if the shell is invoked as `sh'.

`-rcfile FILENAME'
     Execute commands from FILENAME (instead of `~/.bashrc') in an
     interactive shell.

`-noprofile'
     Don't load the system-wide startup file `/etc/profile' or any of
     the personal initialization files `~/.bash_profile',
     `~/.bash_login', or `~/.profile' when bash is invoked as a login
     shell.

`-version'
     Display the version number of this shell.

`-login'
     Make this shell act as if it were directly invoked from login.
     This is equivalent to `exec - bash' but can be issued from another
     shell, such as `csh'.  If you wanted to replace your current login
     shell with a Bash login shell, you would say `exec bash -login'.

`-nobraceexpansion'
     Do not perform curly brace expansion (Note: Brace Expansion.).

`-nolineediting'
     Do not use the GNU Readline library (Note: Command Line Editing.)
     to read interactive command lines.

`-posix'
     Change the behavior of Bash where the default operation differs
     from the Posix 1003.2 standard to match the standard.  This is
     intended to make Bash behave as a strict superset of that standard.

   There are several single-character options you can give which are
not available with the `set' builtin.

`-c STRING'
     Read and execute commands from STRING after processing the
     options, then exit.

`-i'
     Force the shell to run interactively.

`-s'
     If this flag is present, or if no arguments remain after option
     processing, then commands are read from the standard input.  This
     option allows the positional parameters to be set when invoking an
     interactive shell.

   An *interactive* shell is one whose input and output are both
connected to terminals (as determined by `isatty()'), or one started
with the `-i' option.