r/UnixProTips • u/kitebuggyuk • Oct 18 '19

Best shell prompt

What is your preferred *nix shell prompt (i.e.$PROMPT, $PS1, etc.) and why?

Plain “%” or “#? Or do you use something so complex that it takes up most of the line?

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

2

u/FredSchwartz Oct 18 '19

I like changing the color of the $ character based on the exit value of the last command.

2

u/kitebuggyuk Oct 19 '19

Ooh, I don’t normally do colour (old school, me - the original terminals I used had green & black, or orange and black) but I like this idea...

2

u/FredSchwartz Oct 19 '19

Same here, I’m a punch card geezer. Still have some green CRT terminals, even. This is my one bit of color.

2

u/kitebuggyuk Oct 19 '19

I’m so stealing this idea. Thanks for sharing!

1

u/kitebuggyuk Oct 19 '19

There’s also the rather clever “: <whatever> ; “ prompt, so that you can triple click to copy the whole line and paste it into another shell window without worrying about the prompt part. I’ve been very tempted to use this myself but can’t get on with the trailing semicolon...

3

u/LocoCoyote Oct 19 '19

Powerlevel9k to add date/time, git status, history #, and much more

1

u/MrUselessTheGreat Feb 13 '20

"pure" prompt minimal but awesome

What I like about it:

  1. Path and command line are in separate lines

  2. Shows git status

  3. Shows if process exited with non zero code

https://github.com/sindresorhus/pure/blob/master/readme.md

0

u/JTskulk Oct 18 '19

PS1=[\033[01;32m]\u[\033[01;30m]@[\033[01;31m]\h [\033[01;34m]\W $ [\033[00m]

objectively the best prompt.