HOWTO: nice BASH prompt

[seven]

1)first of all - backup your .bashrc file

cp .bashrc .bashrc-backup

2)now edit .bashrc with your editor:

gedit .bashrc

search for lines that contain the string: PS1
and comment them (with # before them).

in the end of the file add:

PROMPT_HOSTNAME='SET_HERE'
PROMPT_COLOR='1;37m'
PROMPT_COLOR2='1;32m'

PS1='\e[${PROMPT_COLOR}[\e[${PROMPT_COLOR2}\u@${PROMPT_HOSTNAME}\e[${PROMPT_COLOR}] $ '

the first color is for the normal font and barckets, and the second one is for the user name and host



I choosed green and white. you can change the first number to any of the following:

30: Black/Dark grey
31: Red
32: Green
33: Yellow
34: Blue
35: Magenta
36: Fuscia
37: White/light grey
38: "Default" foreground color

in the exmaple "1;37m" you will have to change the 37 to another number.
the 1 before it can be set into zero, it is for light \ dark colors

rename the PROMPT_HOSTNAME to your hostname (or anything you want)
and save the file.
pray for your god and open bash, it should work.

it should be like this:
http://www.base17.hostorm.biz/Bash.png

EDIT: I have updated the pic. I used a new PS1
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR2}\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[1;37m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

it is not perfect yet, play with the colors and stuff as much as you want.

another one:
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR2}\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[1;37m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

i think this is the nicest until now

for more info:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofivers...p/t148706.html
http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/U...sh-prompts.php

good luck

[ow50]

Good HOWTO. Here's another good prompt:

PS1='\n\[\033[1;34m\]\342\226\210\342\226\210 \u @ \w\n\[\033[0;36m\]\342\226\210\342\226\210 \t $ \[\033[0;39m\]'

The colorblocks and the newline before the prompt should make it easy to quickly visualize the prompts at a longer console output. For root, I have the same with red and violet and $ replaced with #.



Edit:
Using those colorblock characters seems to cause weird behaviour for backspace and delete. Not good after all.

[JonahRowley]

Here's a helper file I use for this, I can't remember where I got it, or if it's complete, but it has mnemonics for a bunch of colors, which will make this easier. I put it in ~/bin/ansicolor, so I can source ~/bin/ansicolor in scripts I want to add color to.

C_RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
C_GREEN="\[\033[0;32m\]"
C_LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
C_RESET="\[\033[0m\]"

C_BROWN="\[\033[0;33m\]"
C_BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
C_PURPLE="\[\033[0;35m\]"
C_CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\] "
C_GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
C_WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
C_YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"

C_LIGHT_BLUE="\[\033[1;34m\]"
C_LIGHT_CYAN="\[\033[1;36m\]"
C_LIGHT_PURPLE="\[\033[1;35m\]"
C_LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1; 31m\]"
C_LIGHT_GREEN="\[\033[1;32m\]"

Edit: BTW, my prompt is this:

PS1="$C_BLUE[$C_RED\$?$C_BLUE][$C_RED\u@\h:\w$C_BLUE]\$ $C_RESET"

[Juippisi]

Thanks for the HOWTO.

Mine bash: http://www.roskakori.org/juippis/pic...shots/bash.png

And the line:
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\] \[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[01;34m\] \$\[\033[00m\] '

Heh, tried to make it "Gentoo-like"

[stubby]

brilliant stuff. it's so pretty now =). Many thanks for the HOWTO

[henriquemaia]

I was just thinking, after using bash, that I should search on how to change the prompt - so here it is!

Thanks a lot to you all here. All your suggestions are useful.

[Heliode]

I'm using this line:

PROMPT_COLOR='1;32m'
PROMPT_COLOR2='1;32m'
PROMPT_COLOR3='1;34m'

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR2}\u\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR3}@\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR}\h\[\033[1;31m\]:\[\033[1;34m\]\w\[\033[1;31m\]\$\033[00m'

See attachment for what it does

[stubby]

Edit:
Using those colorblock characters seems to cause weird behaviour for backspace and delete. Not good after all.

Here's something that works. The font colour and style is the same, just not the colour thing at the beginning.

PS1='\n\[\033[01;34m\]\u @ \w\n\[\033[0;36m\]\t $ \[\033[0;39m\]'

[techmonkey]

Here's what I use:

function jobcount {
   jobs | wc -l | tr -d " "
}

cur_tty=$(tty | sed -e "s/.*tty\(.*\)/\1/")

loadavg=$(uptime | sed -e "s/.*load average: \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\)/\1/" -e "s/ //g")

# PROMPT

PS1='\[\033[1;44m\]\[\033[1;34m\]  \[\033[1;40m\] [\u@\h:\w]\n\[\033[1;44m\]\[\033[1;34m\]  \[\033[1;40m\] [j:`jobcount`, t:$cur_tty, l:$loadavg]\n\[\033[1;46m\]\[\033[1;36m\]  \[\033[1;40m\] [`date +%D` \t] $> \[\033[0;39m\]'

Three-line hack of the colorblocks prompt. It displays:
1st line: the usual. user@host:directory
2nd line: suspended jobs, tty name and most recent load average.
3rd line: The actual prompt. Just the date and time, and a different kind of prompt character.

Wow, this terminal OWNS now. Shove that in your "C:\>" and smoke it, Win nuts!

[liljencrantz]

I'm using this line:

PROMPT_COLOR='1;32m'
PROMPT_COLOR2='1;32m'
PROMPT_COLOR3='1;34m'

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR2}\u\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR3}@\033[01;32m\e[${PROMPT_COLOR}\h\[\033[1;31m\]:\[\033[1;34m\]\w\[\033[1;31m\]\$\033[00m'

See attachment for what it does

Heh. This thread is such a perfect example of what is wrong with bash. Just look at that PS1 line. It is a completely needless second language within bash, and a 100% unreadable, unmaintanable mess of a language at that. What is wrong with simply specifying a function whose output becomes the prompt? That is what fish does.

function fish_prompt
	whoami
	echo ' '
	set_color green
	echo \n\ 
	pwd
	set_color normal
	echo \n\>\ 
end

The only caveats is that all terminal escape codes, such as those written by the set_color command to set the text color, must en with a newline in order to tell fish how long the escape code sequence is, and that newlines are ignored.

Now tell me that this isn't an order of magnitude more readable and easy to use...