When Bash starts, it loads a bunch of startup scripts to configure itself. You know, ~/.bashrc and friends. Which scripts are executed in what order is complicated. It depends on the type of the shell, the mode it’s in, how it was compiled, and what code each Linux distribution puts into the default startup scripts. The type of shell has two components: An interactive shell is what most people think of as the command line. It shows a prompt, waits for keyboard input and prints output to a s...
