Determining your shell - northwood-labs/macos-for-development GitHub Wiki

[!TIP] Initial setup: 1. Updating macOS • 2. Determining your shell • 3. Installing the Xcode CLI Tools • 4. Installing Homebrew

Every time you open a terminal session, that terminal is started with a particular shell. Knowing which one you're using will help you understand how to configure it.

Which shell?

You can run the following command to identify which shell you are currently running. This works for most shells.

echo $0

Identifier	Description
zsh	Z-Shell
bash or -bash	Bash
ksh	KornShell
csh or tcsh	TCSH

And you can discover where this shell is running from with the following command:

which $(echo $0 | sed -E 's,[^a-z],,g')

Other shells

Other shells exist, but they're not pre-installed in macOS. You'd likely be fully-aware that you're running a different shell. In which case, this page is likely not for you.

Where is my profile?

Identifier	Profile	More info…
zsh	~/.zshrc	https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/388623/8018
bash or -bash	~/.bash_profile	https://scriptingosx.com/2017/04/about-bash_profile-and-bashrc-on-macos/
ksh	~/.profile	https://access.redhat.com/solutions/452073
csh or tcsh	~/.tcshrc	https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/using-csh/9781449377526/ch04.html