How to reinitialize a terminal window instead of closing it and starting a new one?

Question

When i make some changes to the shell/bash behavior. I.e. set up an alias, what quick way does exist to reinitalize the terminal window instead of closing and open a new open? Perhaps a commandline solution?

Answer 1

If you mean reloading your .bashrc configuration then:

. ~/.bashrc (note that dot before the file name)

Answer 2

your shell is an executable you can call. So if you're using bash you can call bash and if you're using something else like zsh you can just enter zsh

Answer 3

Some Addition i found in the manpage from the reset/tset command

tset reset terminal intialization

command: reset

Tset initializes terminals. Tset first determines the type of terminal that you are using. This determination is done as follows, using the first terminal type found.

an advantage seems to be, that it's independent from the used shell. also works with fish here.

Answer 4

You have to replace the running application/shell with a new instance. E.g. if you are using bash as your preferred shell type the following line in your command line ($ is the placeholder for the beginning of your command line):

> $ exec bash

The running application/shell is replaced by new instance of bash like starting from scratch. All your previous modification are gone.

Remark: Do not forget that your terminal application may be reprogrammed. You have to reset your terminal application manually.

Answer 5

An additional option to the exec bash is that if you changed your .profile (or .bash_profile), you can do

$ exec bash --login

That will read your profile again as well. It wouldn't hurt to add the -i option as well to explicitly tell bash that this is an interactive shell, but it can normally figure that out for itself.