Comment 4 for bug 609146

So in my .bash_profile, PATH is set as follows:

# set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
if [ -d $HOME/bin ] ; then
    PATH=$HOME/bin:"${PATH}"
fi

In an xterm/uxterm/gnome-terminal session, this results in a PATH set to

$ set | grep ^PATH=
PATH='~/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games'

In a terminal login shell (via console1 (Ctrl-Alt-F1), or via ssh localhost) this results in a PATH of

$ set | grep ^PATH=
PATH=/home/lippold/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

interestingly, the PATH in the xterm session has quotes and a ~, whereas the PATH in the terminal session has no quotes and an expanded $HOME instead.

I honestly cannot imagine what causes this, but it is very weird that bash behaves differently in an xterm and a non-xterm login.