Table of Contents

Customizing Your Terminal's Prompt

When executing interactively, bash displays the primary prompt PS1 when it is ready to read a command, and the secondary prompt PS2 when it needs more input to complete a command. Bash allows these prompt strings to be cus­tomized by inserting a number of backslash-escaped special characters.

You will need to edit your ~/.bashrc file using a text editor (e.g., emacs, vim, nano, gedit, …)

You will define a PS1 variable and export it.

Bash Escape Sequences

The allowed escape sequences allowed in the Bash prompt are decoded as follows: 

            \a     an ASCII bell character (07)
            \d     the date  in  "Weekday  Month  Date"  format
                   (e.g., "Tue May 26")
            \e     an ASCII escape character (033)
            \h     the hostname up to the first `.'
            \H     the hostname
            \j     the  number of jobs currently managed by the shell
            \l     the basename of the shell's terminal  device name
            \n     newline
            \r     carriage return
            \s     the  name  of  the shell, the basename of $0
                   (the portion following the final slash)
            \t     the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
            \T     the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
            \@     the current time in 12-hour am/pm format
            \u     the username of the current user
            \v     the version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
            \V     the release of bash,  version  +  patchlevel
                   (e.g., 2.00.0)
            \w     the current working directory
            \W     the  basename  of the current working direc­tory
            \!     the history number of this command
            \#     the command number of this command
            \$     if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
            \nnn   the  character  corresponding  to  the octal number nnn
            \\     a backslash
            \[     begin a sequence of non-printing characters,
                   which could be used to embed a terminal con­
                   trol sequence into the prompt
            \]     end a sequence of non-printing characters

Color Codes

Black 0;30 Dark Gray 1;30
Red 0;31 Light Red 1;31
Green 0;32 Light Green 1;32
Brown 0;33 Yellow 1;33
Blue 0;34 Light Blue 1;34
Purple 0;35 Light Purple 1;35
Cyan 0;36 Light Cyan 1;36
Light Gray 0;37 White 1;37

Examples

Here are some examples prompts: 

PS1='[\u@\h \W]\$ '

Look at the escape sequences above to help you determine what the above prompt description means. The prompt would print out something like

[user@home currdir]$ 

PS1="\h:\W \u\$"

This one would look like hostname:currdir

With Color: 

PS1="\[\e[0;35m\]\u@\h \W\$ \[\e[00m\]"
export PS1="\[\e[1;31m\]\h:\W \u\$ \[\e[00m\]"