Customizing bash
Prev | Chapter 2. Setting Up Cygwin | Next

## Customizing bash

To set bash up so that cut and paste work properly, click on the "Properties" button of the window, then on the "Misc" tab. Make sure that "QuickEdit mode" and "Insert mode" are checked. These settings will be remembered next time you run bash from that shortcut. Similarly you can set the working directory inside the "Program" tab. The entry "%HOME%" is valid, but requires that you set `HOME` in the Windows environment.

Your home directory should contain three initialization files that control the behavior of bash. They are `.profile`, `.bashrc` and `.inputrc`. The Cygwin base installation creates stub files when you start bash for the first time.

`.profile` (other names are also valid, see the bash man page) contains bash commands. It is executed when bash is started as login shell, e.g. from the command bash --login. This is a useful place to define and export environment variables and bash functions that will be used by bash and the programs invoked by bash. It is a good place to redefine `PATH` if needed. We recommend adding a ":." to the end of `PATH` to also search the current working directory (contrary to DOS, the local directory is not searched by default). Also to avoid delays you should either unset `MAILCHECK` or define `MAILPATH` to point to your existing mail inbox.

`.bashrc` is similar to `.profile` but is executed each time an interactive bash shell is launched. It serves to define elements that are not inherited through the environment, such as aliases. If you do not use login shells, you may want to put the contents of `.profile` as discussed above in this file instead.

    shopt -s nocaseglob

will allow bash to glob filenames in a case-insensitive manner. Note that `.bashrc` is not called automatically for login shells. You can source it from `.profile`.

`.inputrc` controls how programs using the readline library (including bash) behave. It is loaded automatically. For full details see the `Function and Variable Index` section of the GNU `readline` manual. Consider the following settings:

    # Ignore case while completing
    set completion-ignore-case on
    # Make Bash 8bit clean
    set meta-flag on
    set convert-meta off
    set output-meta on

The first command makes filename completion case insensitive, which can be convenient in a Windows environment. The next three commands allow bash to display 8-bit characters, useful for languages with accented characters. Note that tools that do not use `readline` for display, such as less and ls, require additional settings, which could be put in your `.bashrc`:

    alias less='/bin/less -r'
    alias ls='/bin/ls -F --color=tty --show-control-chars'

Prev | Up | Next
Using Windows security in Cygwin | Home | Chapter 3. Using Cygwin