2.13 A .cshrc.$HOST File for Per Host Setup

I work with different types of machines every day. It is often necessary to set things up differently for, say, a Linux box, than a SPARCstation. Going beyond that, you may want to set things up differently on a per-host basis.

I have this test in my .cshrc file:

setenv if ~	setenv HOST "`uname -n`" if (-e ~/lib/cshrc.hosts/cshrc.$HOST) then source ~/lib/cshrc.hosts/cshrc.$HOST endif

So, if I log in to a machine named (50.7) bosco, and I have a file called ~/lib/cshrc.hosts/cshrc.bosco, I can source (44.23) it to customize my environment for that one machine. Examples of things you would put in a .cshrc.$HOST file:

• Search path (8.7): some machines have /usr/local/bin, and some have /opt. The same goes for cdpath (14.5).

• Terminal settings (5.9): I always like to reach for the upper-right part of a keyboard to erase characters. Sometimes this is the location for the BACKSPACE key, and sometimes it is the DELETE key. I set things up so that I can consistently get "erase" behavior from whatever key is there.

• Other shell variables (6.8) and environment variables (6.1) may be different. You may run a package on a certain machine that relies on a few environment variables. No need to always set them and use up a little bit of memory if you only use them in one place!

In general, this idea allows you to group together whatever exceptions you want for a machine, rather than having to write a series of switch (47.6) or if statements (47.3) throughout your .cshrc and .login files.