dot files

[Gary Weimer]

In article <6270 at minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au> s887212 at minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au (Stephen Riehm [Romulis]) writes:
>
>were does one find descriptions for '.' files?
>
>I have long known of the existence of 'dot' files, ie .cshrc .login etc
>however I have NEVER come across any documentation on how to use these or
>any mention of what dot files are available to do what.
>So far these are the dot files that I know of... most I picked up by word
>of mouth and the .exrc .cshrc .newsrc .login and .logout are the only ones
>I really understand.
>.cshrc        .exrc         .hushlogin       .login       .logout
>.mailrc       .newsrc       .rhosts          .twmrc
>
>I have heard of many more.. .profile comes to mind but I don't know what
>should go in them etc etc.
>Is there a complete list of "common" user definable dot files available..

'dot files' do not have any meaning in and of themselves. They are only
important to the programs that use them.

Notice that many of the files end in 'rc' (anyone no the meaning of this?
I'm sure it's related to the rc in /etc/rc & /etc/rc.local). These are
initialization files for the named program. The meaning and format of most
of these files can be discovered by doing a man on the file name minus the
'.' and 'rc' (i.e. for '.mailrc' do a 'man mail').

If the dot file does not have an 'rc', try doing a man on the whole file
(i.e. for '.rhosts' do a 'man rhosts').

If neither of these work, try doing a man on a recognizable part of the
file name (i.e. for '.hushlogin' do a 'man login').

If you haven't found it yet, try doing keyword searches using the above
algorithms (i.e. 'man -k mail' 'man -k rhosts' 'man -k login')

If none of these work (like for .profile), ask someone else (like here).

The ones I know:
    .cshrc     -- commands to execute when starting csh(1)
    .hushlogin -- suppress the message of the day when logging in
    .login     -- commands to execute when loggin in
                  (see "Initialization & Termination" in csh(1))
    .logout    -- same as .login, but done at logout, not login
    .profile   -- the equivalant of .cshrc for the bourne shell (sh(1))
    .rhosts    -- list of remote hosts (see rhosts(5))
    .twmrc     -- initialization for twm  (X window manager)
    .exrc      --      ' '       ''  ex   (editor)
    .mailrc    --      ' '       ''  mail (the obvious)
    .newsrc    --      ' '       ''  news (rn on my system)

Hope this helps.

Gary Weimer