Is Your Bash Prompt Cramping Your Style?
Linked by Shane on Wed 24th Nov 2010 22:40 UTC
General Development "It is sometimes hard to form a mental model of a directory tree when working with the command line. GUI shells tend to provide more visual cues. So, like a lot of Bash users, I used to get around this by printing the current working directory in my shell prompt. However, things can get pretty cramped when dealing with deeply nested directories. A better solution is needed."
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Why not set the GUI terminal title?
by Hypnos on Wed 24th Nov 2010 22:58 UTC
Hypnos
Member since:
2008-11-19

I don't use OSX -- does Terminal.app not support the escape sequence to set the GUI terminal title? If indeed it does, I think that's a better option for showing long working directory paths.

I use the following bash prompt on my Linux desktop:

export PS1="\[\033]0;\u:<\w>\007\]\n\[\033[01;33m\] > \[\033[00m\]"

This puts all the info into the GUI terminal titlebar, and the only prompt I have in the terminal is a neatly separated > .

Reply Score: 1

Delgarde Member since:
2008-08-19

I don't use OSX -- does Terminal.app not support the escape sequence to set the GUI terminal title? If indeed it does, I think that's a better option for showing long working directory paths.


Well, yes and no. Having the current directory in the title bar is certainly useful - I'd be lost without it. But having the full path clearly displayed every time you change directory sounds pretty handy too, when looking back over past commands to see what went wrong. I'm inclined to give it a try...

Reply Parent Score: 3