Linux – Does .bashrc contain syntax errors

bashbashrclinuxUbuntu

In the Ubuntu 18.04 LT .bashrc file there is the following:

# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in
    xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac

Isn't xterm-color) an instance of unbalanced parentheses? And why does the line end with two semicolons?

To be clear, this is not something I wrote. It's in the virgin file, not edited by me.

If there are syntax errors, to whom should I report this?

Best Answer

This is the standard, correct syntax for a bash case statement(known abstractly as a switch statement in general programming), albeit perhaps an odd syntax when compared to C, Java, or other languages.

From The Linux Documentation Project:

Nested if statements might be nice, but as soon as you are confronted with a couple of different possible actions to take, they tend to confuse. For the more complex conditionals, use the case syntax:
case EXPRESSION in CASE1) COMMAND-LIST;; CASE2) COMMAND-LIST;; ... CASEN) COMMAND-LIST;; esac

Related Solutions

No bashrc file in the home directory

Don't forget it is a hidden file inside your home directory (you would not be the first to do a ls -l and thinking it is not there).

Do following ...

ls -la ~/ | more

There should be a .bashrc on the first page. If not just create it with

vi ~/.bashrc

And simply write following line into it.

PATH=$PATH:~/bin

OR Most of the distributions keep a standard .bashrc file in /etc/skel/ You can copy it to home directory.

$cp /etc/skel/.bashrc ~

Bashrc – What Does .bashrc Actually Do?

Because . is a command.

It's a shell built-in command, that reads the named file and executes the commands therein in the current shell process.

The Bourne Again shell also has source as a synonym for this command. But this is a Bashism (that the Bourne Again shell took from the C Shell). Albeit it is a Bashism that the Bourne Again shell shares with the TENEX C Shell, the Z Shell, and others (but not the Korn shell, note). The Single UNIX Specification only standardizes ..

Also note that the behaviour of ./source subtly changes dependent from whether the Bourne Again shell is being run in its POSIX-compatible mode or not. (Again this is like other shells, although their non-standard behaviours are not the same as one another's. With the Z Shell, for example, there is a precompiled shell script mechanism, and source subtly differs from . in its search path handling. The Korn shell's . will run shell functions, for another example.)

~/.bashrc is merely one of several files whose contents are (dependent from how the shell process is invoked) automatically sourced at shell startup. There's nothing prohibiting it from being manually sourced. Although if its actions aren't idempotent, you might have some fixup work to do afterwards.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

No bashrc file in the home directory

Bashrc – What Does .bashrc Actually Do?

Further reading

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