Customizing $HOME/.profile

The optional $HOME/.profile file contains commands that set or change the values of environment variables for an individual user. (HOME is a variable for the path name for a user's home directory.) The values set in $HOME/.profile can override those in /etc/profile.

Because $HOME/.profile is the z/OS shell equivalent to $HOME/.login for tcsh, you must keep system-wide information for both sets of users in synch. Any customization that you did for $HOME/.profile (such as setting environment variables) must be duplicated in C-shell syntax in $HOME/.login. Future changes to $HOME/.profile also must be made to $HOME/.login. If you maintain a non-z/OS UNIX system, you could consider porting $HOME/.profile and $HOME/.login from that system to the z/OS system and merging them with the z/OS samples.

The following example shows the IBM-supplied /samples/.profile.

# ENV=$HOME/.setup
# export ENV

PATH=$PATH:$HOME:

EDITOR=ed

PS1='$LOGNAME':'$PWD':' >'

export PATH EDITOR PS1