> But that won't help if the /home/myname directory is not crossable for other users.

But it will. Permissions on user directories make no difference in this case - /etc/bash.bashrc is the system-wide initialization file for Bash; the only times it isn't read is if the shell is a login shell or the '--norc' or '--rcfile other_init_file' options are specified.

No, it won't. Sure, you can specify a directory with mode 0700 in a system-wide configuration file, no problem.

But as soon as the application affected by that configuration file (perl, in this case) attempts to read that directory or files inside or below that directory, it will FAIL -- unless, of course, the current user is either the owner of the directory or root. Specifying a directory in some system-wide configuration file does not disable access checks for that directory.

Alexander