shell,

Which shell am I using - how to check

Nov 21, 2021 · 1 min read · Post a comment

Linux comes with support for multiple flavors of shell, including bash, zsh, ksh, csh, or suchlike. This time I’ll be focusing on how to find out which shell you are using, which is the default one and list of all installed shells.

Prerequisites

  • Shell environment

Solution

Find default shell.

echo $SHELL

Output:

/bin/zsh

Find the current shell you are working on.

echo $0

Output:

-zsh

Or, alternatively:

ps -p $$

Output:

PID  TTY           TIME  CMD
2167 ttys001    0:00.30  -zsh

List currently installed shells.

cat /etc/shells

Output:

/bin/csh
/bin/dash
/bin/ksh
/bin/sh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/zsh
/usr/local/bin/pwsh-preview
/usr/local/bin/pwsh

Conclusion

As always, hope this was super handy and if you can think of any other methods to list the current or the default shell environment, please let me know. Feel free to leave a comment below and if you find this tutorial useful, follow our official channel on Telegram.