Completely restart Bash

Question

Is there a way to completely restart Bash and reload .bashrc and .profile and the like? I'd like to make sure my changes worked out properly after editing these files.

Solution 1

Have it replace itself with itself.

exec bash -l

Note that this won't affect things such as the cwd or exported variables.

Solution 2

I urgently suggest to log in on a separate window/screen. This way you still have a working session if something goes wrong with your changes to startup files. Also you are sure to have a clean environment.

Reason: I saw too many people locking themselves out of a system because of a simple typo in their .profile (or such).

Solution 3

If your goal is simply to read the modified files again, you don't have to restart it. You can simply source it.

source filename

or

. filename # notice the dot

Note that this won't give you a "clean state" in a sense that it won't unset any set variables or defined functions...

Solution 4

su -l yourOwnUserName

Will open a fresh shell for yourOwnUserName user with all the settings re-loaded. This is shell-independent, as it refers to system settings, not your specific shell. It also loads some system-wide settings that bash -l does not (like user groups).

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Comments

[Naftuli Kay]

Nice, but I'd especially like to do this in order to check and see if my PATH is being set as I want or my PS1, etc.

[Arcege]

Take out the exec and you get a shell that sources the files that you want. Then just exit when you are done checking.

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

@TK: Any variables you assign will take precedence over the ones left over from the previous shell.

[Naftuli Kay]

So this will work for changing my Bash prompt? Ie, it'll reload my bash prompt each time I run it?

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

As long as you're setting $PS1 in bash's startup files, yes.

[Sardathrion - against SE abuse]

+10, a clean shell where you can change edits is essential.

[Naftuli Kay]

I'm in a DE, so it shouldn't be so bad, Bauhaus yes, be careful.

[underscore_d]

important note: "a fresh shell" here means a shell within your existing shell, so you are only nesting shells, not replacing your original one. The accepted answer does that properly.

[Elliptical view]

On my screen in Firefox, l (the letter ell) and 1 (the numeral one) look similar. This is bash dash ell, not bash dash one.

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

@Elipticalview: fonts.google.com/specimen/Inconsolata

[Dan Nissenbaum]

It would be nice if the answer included what the -l does to save time looking it up.