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Tips for bash / shell / HOME

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Description

Some tips for preparing the HOME environment.

Tips

(*) Hiding

Put in your .bashrc the following line:
umask 077

Meaning:
When you create a file / dir, it'll be hidden from everybody else.

(*) Forwarding bash history to trash

rm .bash_history
ln -s /dev/null .bash_history

Why?
If you do some nasty things and you forget to purge the history, the administrators can trace back what you did. Not a good thing.

(*) Don't add the current directory (".") to your PATH.

Why?
Imagine that someone puts the following script called ls in your HOME:

#!/bin/bash
<some nasty things>
/bin/ls "$@"

When you execute ls, this installed script will be executed if "." is at the beginning of your PATH. Since it calls the real /bin/ls, you don't even notice that something nasty happens too in the background.

(*) Using your favorite text editor

In your .bashrc:

EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim
export EDITOR

If you want to use this editor in Midnight Commander too, then edit ~/mc/ini :

use_internal_view=0
use_internal_edit=0