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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Custom shell prompt tips and tricks? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 1 year ago by wolf@lemmy.zip to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Recently I stumbled over an article, about how to customize your shell prompt. What really surprised me, is that it lacked one of the most basic tips I learned nearly 20 years back: Always display a timestamp in the prompt, to be able to check how long a process is running or when it ended. (Don't need it daily, but every so often it saves my butt. ;-)) The other trick is to always have a colorful prompt, to easily discern where output from programs start/stop. In total my PS1 looks like this (with GIT status at the end): [\e[32m]\u[\e[m]@[\e[35m]\h[\e[m] [\e[36m]\A[\e[m] [\e[37m][[\e[m][\e[31m]\w[\e[m][\e[37m]][\e[m]$(__git_ps1 "(%s)")$

My question is, what customization, tips and tricks do you have for the shell prompt?

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[–] 12510198@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Im glad I was able to help!

Something that should be noted when adding colors to your shell prompt function is adding the non printable characters that keep the terminal from buggin out, this caused me a massive headache until I figured it out. When putting it in the PS1 variable directly you will put \[ to begin a color sequence and \] to end one, but printf will print a literal [ and ] so instead you will have to use \001 to start and \002 to end, I also recommend changing \e to \033 or \x1B to make things a bit more portable. For a quick example \[\e[1;31m\] would become \001\033[1;31m\002. Without these characters the terminal will like glitch out when you type a long command and then go back to the front.

If you are like messing around or trying to learn a new programming language, you can try like porting your shell prompt to that language, Ive ported mine to C and set it using the same subsitution shell method, I thought it was a fun lil challenge.

But anyways, I hope you have fun customizing your shell prompt!

[–] wolf@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks, of course the color escapes are the first thing I ran into yesterday, when I played around with prompt functions. ;-)

Porting your prompt command to another language is a very nice and practical little project, perhaps I will give it a go with Go. (Pun intended ;-))

Have a great week!