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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[-] multicorn@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

If you like customizing your shell, there are really cool things one can do with zsh.

I have mine set up with suggestions to complete the name of the program, or even command line options for it.

[-] wolf@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago

zsh ... it is totally awesome, I saw a lot of crazy autocomplete stuff by people using it. I stick to bash mostly because it is simply installed everywhere and good enough for my needs. (With some help like autojump for bash.)

this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023

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