The BashShell provides zillions of ways to customize your prompt.
ChrisGarrod uses this prompt -- the prompt is shown both before and after the code that creates it:
# 00:55:43 garrod@humu 1.74 $ cd ~ && grep ' 'PS .profile
# yyp!!grep PS ~/.profile
# PS is the prompt string, and can be customized a zillion ways
PS1="\n" # PS1 is the most commonly seen prompt is PS1 see man bash
PS1="$PS1#" # Make accidentally pasted lines comments
PS1="$PS1$tickenv" # w/TicketNo
PS1="$PS1 \t" # the current time
PS1="$PS1 \u" # the username
PS1="$PS1@" # the at sign (we're building an email address here)
PS1="$PS1\h" # the host name
PS1="$PS1 `/bin/basename $tty 2>/dev/null||/usr/bin/basename $tty `"
PS1="$PS1." # separate tty from command number
PS1="$PS1\#" # command line number in history
PS1="$PS1 \\$" # This is a dollar sign for normal use or a # when superusered
PS1="$PS1 cd" # make it paste cleaner
PS1="$PS1 \w" # the working directory - bracketed by space for cut/paste
PS1="$PS1 &&" # make it paste cleaner across multiple windows and hosts
PS1="$PS1 " # make it paste cleaner
PS2=" " # wait to close quotes or compound statement (paste it!)
PS3="Pick a number: " # try: select name in *;do echo $name;done
alias PS="grep PS ~/$DotFile"
export PS1 PS2 PS3
# 00:56:03 garrod@humu 1.75 $ cd ~ &&
My favorite features are that inadvertant pastings of screen scrapes make prompting lines comments. The string in PS2 is actually a tab, so the whole continued command can be pasted elsewhere for future use. And having the cd to the current working directory followed by && (if it worked do the rest) and then the current command I have typed. There's also a blank line separating the output of the previous command from the prompt
PS3 is something I rarely use, so it's comment has a paster for me to try
The final result of the above code looks like this for my PS1, the primary prompt string
PS1=\n# \t \u@\h 1.\# \$ cd \w &&
Years later, my prompt has evolved. Today it looks like this:
# 20130415.232138 garrod@MinnieTheMoocher ttys000.1 $ cd ~ && echo $PS1
\n# \D{%Y%m%d.%H%M%S}, \u@\h ttys000.\# \$ cd \w &&
# 20130415.232155 garrod@MinnieTheMoocher ttys000.2 $ cd ~ &&
I use multiple Terminal windows on my Mac, so it helps to know which one I'm looking at just by the prompt. The first floating point number is a DateStamp.TimeStamp
That's my prompt. What's yours? -- ChrisGarrod
"Freeware" sometimes tries to trick people into installing crapware with prompts that resemble:
Do you not want to not install the whizShop tool-bar? [Yes] [No]