The .login file

In your home directory, the file .login contains information which is read by the Unix shell once when you log in -- but after it has first read the .cshrc file!

Here is where you would want to put commands that make sense to be run one time at the beginning of your login, rather than every time you open another terminal window (which is what .cshrc is for).

Here are some possible contents of the file .login:

stty erase ^h kill ^u intr ^c
mesg y
biff n
set term = vt100
setenv DISPLAY ${hostname}:0
echo "Welcome dude"

There are manual pages for stty and mesg and biff. Apart from the personalized welcome message (echo...), these commands inform the computer about terminal type, keyboard configuration, display destination, and whether to notify the user about incoming messages/email.