I find a prompt better than a status line for reminding one of where one is, muc... | Hacker News

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barrkel on Feb 27, 2011 | parent | context | favorite | on: My 10 UNIX Command Line Mistakes

I find a prompt better than a status line for reminding one of where one is, much like including the CWD in the prompt.

I use a similar style:

    [alfie] ~$
    [rupert] ~$

etc. for my SSH connections, but not for local shells, even though I also use screen. I also use color-coded prompts for selecting particular PATH and other environment variable setups for different branches of our corporate dev tree, to remind myself which compiler etc. I'm using.

tres on Feb 27, 2011 [–]

This is one of my strategies too (along with screen labels). Add to ~/.bash_profile :

PS1="\[\033[0m\](\[\033[0;36m\]\u\[\033[0m\]@\[\033[0;33m\]\h\[\033[0m\])(\[\033[1;34m\]\w\[\033[0;0;0m\])"

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