title: Best practice for Bash start-up files on a Mac
body: <p>As I understand it, the order that start-up files are read by the bash shell on a Mac are...</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>~/.bash_profile</li>
  <li>~/.bash_login</li>
  <li>~/.profile</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>..and once one file in this list is found, the contents of the other is ignored.</p>
  
  <p>That being said, is there a best practice for which of these files should be my one true Bash start-up file?</p>
  
  <p>On one hand, if .bash_profile will take precedence over any other potential start-up file, then that should be used, because you can be sure that 100% of the time the info in that start-up file is being run.</p>
  
  <p>On the other hand, if .profile is the file that exists on Mac systems by default, and .bash_profile needs to be manually created, then perhaps that should be used, and there will never be a reason to create a .bash_profile file.</p>
  
  <p>Thoughts?</p>