Is Your Bash Prompt Cramping Your Style?

In ZSH, there’s an environment variable called $RPS1 which gives the right aligned prompt text. My specific settings are:

PS1=’%B(%h) %m%#%b ‘
RPS1=’(%20<…<%~)'

and here is how they appear.

http://imgur.com/OAZhC

I simply set PS1=”[\t][\u@\H:\w]\r\n$ ” which gives me a prompt looking like
[16:02:33][chrisw@arch:/mnt/Storage/workspace]
$

Kevin, I’m using Terminal.app with a SIMBL plugin called terminalcolours to customise the colours. The theme is a modified version of ir_black.

The bar at the bottom is a tmux status bar.

I use a very simple prompt. Just the hostname up to the first dot, and the last part of the path (up to the last slash).

PS1=’[\h] \W> ‘

It looks like: [compute-0-29] log>

[compute-0-29] log> hostname
compute-0-29.local
[compute-0-29] log> pwd
/var/log

I use this because I usually don’t really need to know all the hostname nor the full path.

Add this command to your .bashrc:

proml () 
{ 
    case $TERM in 
        xterm*)
            PS1="\\[\33]0;\\u@\\h   \\w\0733[7m\\]: \\u@\\h {\${HISTCMD}} \$;\\[33[m\\] "
        ;;
        *)
            PS1="\\[33[7m\\]: \\u@\\h {\\!} \$;\\[33[m\\] "
        ;;
    esac;
    export PS1
}

And your prompt will look like this:

: scs@phred {321} $; 

but the banner at the top of your terminal window will be painted with the path (among other things). Most of the explanation of those things will be left to the student, but one of the non-obvious features is that a prompt like that can be cut and pasted along with any trailing command, and only the trailing command will be executed. The prompt will be ignored when pasted.

I recommend the Bash Prompt Howto page at http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/, especially section 6.3 on how to set the banner bars.

@Steve Simmons: That’s a neat idea, having a prompt that is ignored when the whole line is copied and pasted.

Actually I’d think that the moment I use ‘cd’ is also the moment I least need to know $(pwd). I have that information in PS1 so that when I come back to a shell I immediately know where I am. If I use ‘cd’ I already know where I’m going.

I use this trick: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x783.html

I’ve gone for a simpler hostname + innermost two directories; that seems to be enough to remember where I am. In tcsh:
set prompt = ‘%m %B%C2%b > ‘
(%m is hostname, %B and %b turn on and off bold, and %Cn is the n innermost levels of the path. )

I do like the two-line idea, though I also value compactness (it makes a small embedded terminal in e.g. kate more useful)… hm. I’ll have to test it at some point.

I wrote a script (I call it ‘sd’ for Stored Directory”) which let’s me assign number, letters, or strings to directories. by typing sd 1 `pwd` it stores the current directory at “1″, and to cd to this dir all I have to type from now on is ‘sd 1′

I like this a whole lot better than that push/pop dir thing people always talk about. and also sd stored the directories in a temp file in your home directory, so it works across multiple shells and after reboots and such.

#!/bin/bash

sdfile="$HOME/.stored-paths"

function delete_entry {
        newfile=""
        firstline=1;
        while read line; do
                i=`echo $line | cut -d\  -f1`
                if [[ "$i" != "$1" ]] ; then
                        if [[ "$firstline" == "0" ]] ; then
                                newfile="$newfile"$'\n'
                        else
                                firstline=0
                        fi
                        newfile="$newfile""$line"
                fi
        done  $sdfile
#       eval echo "\${newfile%\$'\n'}" #> #sdfile
}

function store_entry {
        while read line; do
                i=`echo $line | cut -d\  -f1`
                if [[ "$i" == "$1" ]] ; then
                        delete_entry "$i"
                        break
                fi
        done > $sdfile
        sort < $sdfile -o $sdfile
}

function change_dir {
        while read line; do
                i=`echo $line | cut -d\  -f1`
                if [[ "$1" == "$i" ]] ; then
                        dir="`echo $line | cut -f 2 -d\ `"
                        cd "$dir"
                        echo "$dir"
                        return 0
                fi
        done &2
        return 1
}

if [[ -f $sdfile ]]; then
        echo > /dev/null
else
        touch $sdfile
fi

if [[ "$1" == "--clear" ]] ; then
        printf "" > $sdfile
elif (( $# == 0 )) ; then
        cat "$sdfile"
elif [[ "$1" == "-d" ]] ; then
        delete_entry "$2"
elif [[ "$2" != "" ]] ; then
        store_entry "$1" "$2"
elif [[ "$1" != "" ]] ; then
        change_dir "$1"
        return "$?"
elif "$1" == "-h" || "$1" == "--help" ; then
        echo "sd - store directories for quick cd'ing"
        echo "Copyright (C) Brandon Captain. Released under the GPL v2."
        echo ""
        echo "Usage: sd 1 /usr/src/linux/  # store path at identifier '1'"
        echo "Usage: sd bin /usr/bin       # store path at identifier 'bin'"
        echo "Usage: sd 1                  # cd to path at identifier '1'"
        echo "Usage: sd                    # show all paths"
        echo "Usage: sd -d 1               # clear path 1"
        echo "Usage: sd --clear            # clear all paths"
        echo "Usage: sd -h                 # this help screen"
        echo "Usage: sd --help             # this help screen"
fi

@invaderzim: Sure, here’s my .tmux.conf:

# Convenient way to reload config file.
bind-key r source-file ~/.tmux.conf

# We're used to GNU Screen key bindings.
set-option -g prefix C-a
unbind-key C-b
bind-key C-a last-window
bind-key a send-prefix

# Start window numbers at 1.
set-option -g base-index 1

# Use Vi mode.
set-window-option -g mode-keys vi
set-option -g status-keys vi

# Splitting windows into panes.
bind v split-window -h
bind s split-window -v

# Selecting panes.
#
# Following are not yet supported in our version (1.2) of tmux.
#bind h select-pane -L
#bind j select-pane -D
#bind k select-pane -U
#bind l select-pane -R

# Use these to select panes for now.
bind h up-pane
bind j down-pane
bind k up-pane
bind l down-pane

# Resizing panes.
bind-key -r C-h resize-pane -L
bind-key -r C-j resize-pane -D
bind-key -r C-k resize-pane -U
bind-key -r C-l resize-pane -R
set-option -g repeat-time 700

# Mouse support.
setw -g mode-mouse on
set-option -g mouse-select-pane on

#setw -g monitor-activity on
set-window-option -g automatic-rename on
set-option -g set-titles on
set-option -g set-titles-string '#H'

# Customise status bar.
set-option -g status-bg black
set-option -g status-fg white
set-window-option -g window-status-current-bg yellow
set-window-option -g window-status-current-fg black
set-window-option -g window-status-current-format ' #I #W '
set-window-option -g window-status-format ' #I #W '
set-option -g status-left ' '
set-option -g status-justify left
set-option -g status-right ' #[fg=yellow]#T '  # Show terminal title (I pass pwd to the terminal title).
set-option -g status-right-length 150

# Customise pane border colours.
set-option -g pane-active-border-fg black
set-option -g pane-active-border-bg default
set-option -g pane-border-fg black
set-option -g pane-border-bg default

[...] however it wasn’t complete for people in the default Ubuntu Linux environment. The article, here, shows that by adding this amount of code to your ~/.bashrc file you can modify your prompt: # [...]

Bacus, tab completion still works for me.