So, setting rvm_project_rvmrc=0 will still execute RVM's cd script, but it will skip the part that loads an rvmrc Not exactly: setting 'rvm_project_rvmrc=0' ca

So, setting rvm_project_rvmrc=0 will still execute RVM's cd script, but it will skip the part that loads an rvmrc Not exactly: setting 'rvm_project_rvmrc=0' causes rvm's cd script to immediately bail out. From .rvm/scripts/cd: if [[ "$rvm_project_rvmrc" -ne 0 ]] ; then Everything else in the cd script hangs off that if. So by setting the environment variable, that whole branch (which is the whole script) is skipped and rvm won't get in front of cd.