Arch Linux

The final line of https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/packages.git/tree/trunk/system.bashrc?h=packages/bash checks to see if bash-completion is installed, and if so, sources it. In the event that bash-completion is *not* installed, this causes the final command in /etc/bash.bashrc to be [ -r /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ], which fails. This is a well-documented caveat to using && for conditionals.

If the user does not have a bashrc, then upon initially opening a new interactive shell, echo $? returns "1". This can be user visible in some cases like when setting PS1 to something which displays the previous command's return status, but in .profile instead of .bashrc, then opening a new interactive shell. The PS1 then has a rather confusing value in it.

(initially reported by a confused user in #bash on freenode)

A better default bashrc would ensure it finishes off with a successful command -- this can be done by switching:

[ -r /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ] && . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion

to

if [ -r /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then
. /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
fi

This is a good time to perform this minor cosmetic change, since bash is already flagged out of date for patch 5.0.016 -> 5.0.017