How to invoke shell script while staying in interactive mode

Question

When I call:

execl("/bin/sh", "/bin/sh", (void *) NULL);

The /bin/sh/ program is started, which opens a shell in which I can type commands. However, if I call:

execl("/bin/sh", "/bin/sh", "~/somescript.sh", (char *) 0 );

The /bin/sh program is also started and runs the given shell script but then closes afterwards.

Why doesn't the shell stay open after running a shell script? Is there anyway to keep it open after running the script?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

This is a normal shell behaviour that doesn't have anything in common with the fact that you run it from C - it happens even if you run the shell with the script from command line:

$ sh ~/somescript.sh

It might be difficult to force shell to stay in interactive mode after that. I found only the --rcfile [file] option to do that:

Execute commands from file instead of the system wide initialization file /etc/bash.bashrc and the standard personal initialization file ~/.bashrc if the shell is interactive (see INVOCATION below).

I.e. you would do

$ sh --rcfile ~/somescript.sh

But your system rc files like /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc will not be run in this case.

Answer 2

How about running an interactive shell at the end of your script?

#!/bin/sh

echo STUFF
echo MORE STUFF
sh