In article <barmar-EE5BDC.22234519052007@comcast.dca.giganews.com>, Barry
Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> > What is the benefit, other than the formal differences, of using a login
> > shell vs. not using it? - Mac OS X has two consoles, "Terminal" creating a
> > login shell and 'xterm' not creating it (in 'bash'), both typically opened
>
> xterm will create a login shell if you give it the -ls option.
>
> > after the GUI login, and it is easy to change it.
>
> A login shell will run the .profile startup script to initialize
> environment variables for the login session.

Thank you, Barry, but those are the formal differences. If I turn off the
login shell, but otherwise use the same startup (but from a different
file), will I loose anything?

[In order to get the Unicode locale working in Terminal, I have in
Preferences -> Execute this command put
/usr/bin/env LC_CTYPE=UTF-8 /bin/bash -l
If I do not want the login shell, I just take away the -l. (In latest
xterm, it suffices to just put 'export LC_CTYPE=UTF-8' somewhere in the
startup.)]

Hans Aberg