Joseph,
Yes, I am sure that is true.  Something in trying what JT posted made me
think that as well and when I rechecked the man page for su I was reminded
of the difference although I never really understood the details.  It's
these little discoveries that make life interesting and make me want to
explore.  Basicly, I always thought you were logging in as the other user
but somehow logging in differently,  I guess using su without the "-" is
more like a "steal the identity of".  LOL

JT,

Thanks very much.  I did always know there were environmental differences
but I never knew how to see the difference.  Comparing results of 'env' and
of 'set' before and after the switch was a frustrating experience for
several reasons.  And I never knew about using export without arguments.  I
had only ever seen it used to actually export things.  Probably sounds dumb
to most of you but a revelation to me as it also explains some other things
for me.

On 11/29/06, Jeremy C. Reed <reed@reedmedia.net> wrote:
>
> > su -
> > the - means to login instead of just changing users.  The environment
> > vars are set differently.  To see the differences type
> >   export
> >
> > in each case and you'll get a list of the shell VARS.  You can compare
> > the two and see the differences.
>
> Which may explain why XAUTHORITY (mentioned in previous email) may be
> missing.
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