The prompt is the text you see when you have a Terminal window open. It's called a 'prompt' because it's prompting you to enter a command.
In your home directory (~), there should be a file named .bash_profile or .bashrc
This file is created by the shell, but you can alter it.
2024-12-03 11:39:24 [~/httpd/bash] trudge: cd 2024-12-03 11:50:13 [~] trudge: 2024-12-01 11:54:26 [~] trudge: ls -al total 656 drwxr-xr-x+ 61 trudge staff 1952 Dec 1 11:02 . drwxr-xr-x 9 root admin 288 Nov 4 13:08 .. -rwxr-xr-x 1 trudge staff 8 Mar 8 2022 .CFUserTextEncoding drwx------@ 2 trudge staff 64 Jan 2 2023 .DDLocalBackups drwx------@ 2 trudge staff 64 Nov 26 2023 .DDPreview -rw-r--r--@ 1 trudge staff 38916 Dec 1 11:29 .DS_Store drwx------+ 12 trudge staff 384 Nov 29 18:56 .Trash drwxr-xr-x@ 5 trudge staff 160 Jan 2 2023 .android -rw------- 1 trudge staff 11485 Dec 1 11:00 .bash_history -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 trudge staff 956 Dec 1 11:08 .bash_profile drwxr-xr-x 85 trudge staff 2720 Dec 1 11:08 .bash_sessions . . . drwxr-xr-x 442 trudge staff 14144 Nov 24 11:22 bin drwxr-xr-x@ 33 trudge staff 1056 Nov 20 13:44 httpd 2024-12-01 11:54:32 [~] trudge:
My prompt displays 2 lines of text containing useful (to me anyway) information.
If either file does exist, open it in a text editor (BBEdit or TextEdit).
If for some reason it does not exist, open a NEW file in your text editor, and save it as:
.bash_profile in your home directory.
In an existing file, look for a line starting with 'PS1='. That is the line defining what your Prompt String is.
At the beginning of that line, add an octothorpe (hash mark): #. That tells the shell that this line is a comment, and will not get executed.
This also saves the original PS1 definition in case you want to go back to it. Just delete the '#' and any other lines beginning with PS1.
If you are creating a NEW file, add the following line (copy & paste) at the top of the file:
export PS1='\D{%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}\n[\w] \u: '
That is how I create my prompt, and it looks very confusing right now, but here is what it means:
• export
This makes a variable available to other shell programs you run
• PS1
This is the variable that holds your Prompt String
• \D
This starts a Date definition held in curly braces { }
• {%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S}
The format of the date & time
• %Y renders 4 digits for year
• - a hyphen
• %m 2 digit month with leading 0
• - a hyphen
• %d 2 digit day of month with leading 0
• a space
• %H 2 digit hour (24 hour clock) with leading 0
• : a colon
• %M 2 digit minute with leading 0
• : a colon
• %S 2 digit second with leading 0
• \n a newline character
• [\w] the current working directory in square brackets
• a space
• \u the current user logged in
• : a colon
• a space
Note the whole string is in single-quotes.
2024-12-03 11:50:13 [~] trudge:
The prompt is one of the things you can experiment with. Anything you do with it is cosmetic and can be reversed, so don't be shy.
Coding