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2:08 PM

$SHELL doesn’t tell you which shell is running, it tells you what the top-most shell in your current stack of shells is (probably your login shell, as defined in your user information e.g. in /etc/passwd, or in WSL, the default interactive shell). — Stephen Kitt 9 mins ago

@StephenKitt "probably your login shell"?

I thought $SHELL is by definition the login shell set in etc/passwd

when can it not be?

Stephen Kitt

@terdon for example, if you create a profile in GNOME Terminal that starts a shell other than your default shell, that’s what will show up in $SHELL

Basically if SHELL isn’t already set in the environment, a shell will set it to point to itself. So in a chain of processes, the first shell wins.

terdon

       SHELL  This variable expands to the full pathname to the shell.  If it
              is  not  set when the shell starts, bash assigns to it the full
              pathname of the current user's login shell.

gotcha

thanks

terdon@oregano ~ $ SHELL=bob bash
terdon@oregano ~ $ echo $SHELL
bob

heh

1 hour later…

Stephen Kitt

3:43 PM

@terdon yup, or

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh
$ SHELL= bash
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

terdon

that sure, but I was surprised that SHELL bash didn't have SHELL overwritten by whatever was in /etc/passwd

Stephen Kitt

In fact, that’s bash-specific:

$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh
$ SHELL= bash
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
$ SHELL= zsh
$ echo $SHELL

$

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jesse_b

4:01 PM

We are old :(

Apparently I've been on this site for 5 years now. I remember when it used to take 5 years for 5 years time to pass, now it only takes a few months.

Stephen Kitt

@jesse_b I read an explanation somewhere for this: as we get older, every year we add to our lives adds a smaller fraction of our life, which is why years seem to go faster as we get older.

jesse_b

@StephenKitt That makes sense, but I'm still not happy about it and I wont stand for it

Stephen Kitt

Perhaps people who can’t create long-term memories don’t feel years going by faster.

jesse_b

I've probably got enough head injuries to start testing that soon

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b What prompted that?

jesse_b

4:12 PM

@FaheemMitha I saw my user profile said I've been a member for 5 years but it only feels like 2 or 3

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b Oh, I see.

You've been here a while, yes.

jesse_b

but time does go considerably faster the older you get. 5 years ago still feels like when I graduated high school

Faheem Mitha

@jesse_b Agreed. I noticed that too. I remember the years that I was in school seemed to take an eternity to go by. Whereas in recent years, it feels like it's a new year every 5 minutes or so. Of course, I was miserable in my school, which makes one more conscious of passing time.

Also have ones time regimented makes the days go by slower.

2 hours later…

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