[TriLUG] to delete root, or not too?

[Alan Porter]

> $SHELL gives (in the case of tcsh/csh/bash) the shell you opened the 
> session with, not your current shell.

Actually, $SHELL tells which shell should be used to interpret scripts 
that have no interpreter specified on the first line.

In most cases, it is read from /etc/passwd. But it can be over-ridden. 
Try some experiments by writing a shell script with no #!/bin/myshell at 
the top, and then set the $SHELL variable to various things and run the 
script. You'll get some weird, but predictable, behavior.

$SHELL is a directive for future shells, not an observation of current 
shells.


Alan







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