How do I check which shell I am using?
You can type the following command in your terminal to see which shell you are using:
echo $0
The result will look something similar to the below if you are using the bash (Bourne Again Shell) terminal:
-bash
To find the shell you have on the default environment you can check the value of the SHELL
environment variable:
echo $SHELL
To find the current shell instance, look for the process (shell) having the PID of the current shell instance.
To find the PID of the current instance of shell:
echo "$$"
Now to find the process having the PID:
ps -p <PID>
Putting it together:
ps -p "$$"
$SHELL
gives you the default shell.
$0
gives you the current shell.
For example: I have bash as my default shell, which I use for my Terminal App. But for my iTerm2 app, I use the command as the window opens: /bin/ksh
.
So my
$0
gives me /bin/ksh
on iTerm2.
$SHELL
gives me /bin/bash
on iTerm2.
$0
,$SHELL
gives me /bin/bash
on Terminal