Joerg Klemenz writes:

>Thats why every other shell except ksh uses its own *rc file for
>non-interactive use.

I don't know about other shells that use its own config files but
if you are speaking about bash's idea of a startup rc-file sequence,
then I'd say it's the single most broken thing in bash (the program
isn't that bad otherwise, but the bashrc - profile - BASH_ENV and
what else execute sequence is totally blasted and works in some
modes in the exact opposite way that sh/ksh do -- arrgh.)

It provokes great pain and explicitly scripted workarounds to produce
startup files etc. that work with sh/ksh and bash in all three uses
(login-sh, non-login-sh, noninteractive) even though they don't use
any bash (or ksh) specific commands in them, just to get right the
different ordering of evaluation between sh/ksh on one side, and bash
on the other.  I don't know about zsh, is it also that horrible there?

-- 
Matthias Buelow,
de.uni-wuerzburg.informatik@mkb