$USER != whoami

I'm trying to re-install homebrew on my mac. I get this error: michaels-1856:~ michael.snowden$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install) " ==> This script will install: /usr/local/bin/brew /usr/local/Library/... /usr/local/share/man/man1/brew.1 ==> The following directories will be made group writable: /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/share/man/man1 ==> The following directories will have their owner set to tomcat: /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/share/man/man1 ==> The following directories will have their group set to admin: /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/share/man/man1 Press RETURN to continue or any other key to abort ==> /usr/bin/sudo /bin/chmod g+rwx /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/share/man/man1 Password: ==> /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown tomcat /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/share/man/man1 chown: tomcat: illegal user name Failed during: /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/chown tomcat /usr/local/bin /usr/local/share /usr/local/share/man /usr/local/share/man/man1 michaels-1856:~ michael.snowden$ It's this line that troubles me: chown: tomcat: illegal user name I googled homebrew "the following directories will have their owner set to", and only found one search result, which was the [homebrew install script](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install) My username isn't tomcat, as far as I know. Specifically, this is the line of the script that's giving me trouble: "The following directories will have their owner set to #{Tty.underline 39}#{ENV['USER']}#{Tty.reset}:" The problem, from what I can gather, is that $USER=tomcat, but whoami=michael.snowden michaels-1856:~ michael.snowden$ whoami michael.snowden michaels-1856:~ michael.snowden$ echo $USER tomcat **EDIT** The only thing i found in my ~/.bash* files referencing "tomcat" was something I did to see if tomcat was a valid user after creating this post. michaels-1856:~ michael.snowden$ cat ~/.bash* | grep tomcat chown tomcat test.txt **EDIT** This got resolved, but the solution was really specific to my computer's setup and took a lot of digging.