onStarting
Table of Contents
1 On starting the shell
My problem of the moment is updating the funclocn function. I won't solve that here, merely point to it as a reminder of a. getting better control of that step, and b. reminding myself how it's done.
The problem arises from the way I start my shell. I rely on the "source" the .profile. And, I load most of my needed functionality with a "source" of .myrc. That has the job of loading the function library names, so, when looking for a function, I have the complete list. I use a short list of directories:
- my HOME/bin – in addition to the system defaults
- the Dropbox/bin – since I want to share across platforms, and
- Dropbox/git/bash-functions/bin – where I'm making the core work accessible to the community.
Enough for now; let's go find funclocn, the updated version.
1.1 and start-up files
"Supporting reply to Cmacd"
from cmacd's helpful post
> _If you go into the view menu and click on "show hidden files" all the file with a dot as the first character will magically appear, totally overwhelming your user files, as most programs use the feature to store a configuration file or directory in each users home area_, …
decades ago ( 3, at least ), along with Bill Anderson and Al Brumm, we discovered "bitmeld". Any worthy unix directory base that might host a "bin" had a (partially filled) tree of directories: bin, include, tmp, man, etc, lib, and doc. OK, so we made up "doc", but you see it in other guises.
One's PATH identifies a sequence of "bin"s (is there any other name for this container?). The C programmer dealt with an Include path, the manual pages search a Man path, and so forth. these should all have a common base. Our idea at the time was for everyone to have and Etc directory for all the noise that crept into the user's HOME directory. i.e. the profusion of start-up, data files in $HOME/.rc.myworldsavingtool. it could just as easily been relegated to $HOME/etc/… The idea of having to hide such a file assumed a too-simple user. The idea and the file are both mis-placed.
We (A, B, and me) fancied ourselves the worlds first "software environmentalists". The job is still unfilled. After a decade in teaching and training, i've moved from trying to clean up the world to uplifiting its next gardners.