What is the meaning of -bash?

Question

I typed the command echo $0 in tty1, and it returned -bash, why not bash?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

It indicates that bash was started as a login shell. From man bash, section INVOCATION (emphasis mine):

A login shell is one whose first character of argument zero is a -,  or
one started with the --login option.
...
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a  non-inter‐
active  shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes com‐
mands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.   After  reading
that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile,
in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one  that
exists  and  is  readable.  The --noprofile option may be used when the
shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

When a login shell exits, bash reads and  executes  commands  from   the
file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.

$0, of course, is argument zero.

In Ubuntu, typically .profile exists and .bash_profile and .bash_login don't. So, a login shell reads .profile.

What is the meaning of -bash?

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