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Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 19:26:31 +0930
From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To: Jose Monteiro <jm@pluriproj.pt>
Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Setting PS1
References: <342c7acd.3384017@mail.leirianet.pt>
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In-Reply-To: <342c7acd.3384017@mail.leirianet.pt>; from Jose Monteiro on Fri, Sep 26, 1997 at 09:11:57AM +0000
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On Fri, Sep 26, 1997 at 09:11:57AM +0000, Jose Monteiro wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Originally my .bash_profile came with:
>
> # # set prompt: ``username@hostname$ ''
> PS1="`whoami`@`hostname | sed 's/\..*//'`"
> case `id -u` in
>         0) PS1="${PS1} # ";;
>         *) PS1="${PS1} $ ";;
> esac
>
> In order to put the current working directory in PS1, I changed the
> above lines to:
>
> # # set prompt: ``username@hostname$ ''
> PS1="`whoami`@`hostname | sed 's/\..*//'`"
> case `id -u` in
>         0) PS1="${PS1} ${PWD}# ";;
>         *) PS1="${PS1} ${PWD}$ ";;
> esac
>
> But the result is a permanent $HOME in PS1, even if I cd to anywhere
> else.

It's also a cumbersome way of doing it.

> What should I do in order to get a prompt like:
>
> jose@thor /usr/local$ cd bin
> jose@thor /usr/local/bin$

AFAIK the following information only applies to bash, but some other
shells have similar metavariables.

\u represents your user name
\h represents your host name
\w represents your home directory

There are more in the bash man page, but these are the ones you want.
Write:

PS1='\u@\h \w\$ '

This is in fact not too different from mine:

PS1='=== \u@\h (`tty`) \w \# -> '

Greg