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

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Command Line