Bash – Run an interactive bash subshell with initial commands without returning to the (“super”) shell immediately

bash

I want to run a bash subshell, (1) run a few commands, (2) and then remain in that subshell to do as I please. I can do each of these individually:

  1. Run command using -c flag:

    $> bash -c "ls; pwd; <other commands...>"

    however, it immediately returns to the "super" shell after the commands are executed. I can also just run an interactive subshell:

  2. Start new bash process:

    $> bash

    and it won't exit the subshell until I say so explicitly… but I can't run any initial commands. The closest solution I've found is:

    $> bash -c "ls; pwd; <other commands>; exec bash"

    which works, but not the way I wanted to, as it runs the given commands in one subshell, and then opens a separate one for interaction.

I want to do this on a single line. Once I exit the subshell, I should return back to the regular "super"shell without incident. There must be a way~~

NB: What I am not asking…

  1. not asking where to get a hold of the bash man page
  2. not asking how to read initializing commands from a file… I know how to do this, it's not the solution I'm looking for
  3. not interested in using tmux or gnu screen
  4. not interested in giving context to this. I.e., the question is meant to be general, and not for any specific purpose
  5. if possible, I want to avoid using workarounds that sort of accomplish what I want, but in a "dirty" way. I just want to do this on a single line. In particular, I don't want to do something like xterm -e 'ls'

Best Answer

This can be easily done with temporary named pipes:

bash --init-file <(echo "ls; pwd")

Credit for this answer goes to the comment from Lie Ryan. I found this really useful, and it's less noticeable in the comments, so I thought it should be its own answer.

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