Bash Prompt HOWTO

 Bash Prompt HOWTO
 Giles Orr, [email protected]
 v0.76 31 December 1999

Creating and controlling terminal and xterm prompts is discussed,
 including incorporating standard escape sequences to give username,
 current working directory, time, etc. Further suggestions are made on
 how to modify xterm title bars, use external functions to provide
 prompt information, and how to use ANSI colours.
 ______________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Administrivia

1.1 Requirements
 1.2 How To Use This Document
 1.3 Translations
 1.4 Problems
 1.5 Send Me Comments and Suggestions
 1.6 Credits
 1.7 Copyright and Disclaimer

2. Bash and Bash Prompts

2.1 What is Bash?
 2.2 What Can Tweaking Your Bash Prompt Do For You?
 2.3 Why Bother?
 2.4 The First Step
 2.5 Bash Prompt Escape Sequences
 2.6 Setting the PS? Strings Permanently

3. Bash Programming and Shell Scripts

3.1 Variables
 3.2 Quotes and Special Characters
 3.3 Command Substitution
 3.4 Non-Printing Characters in Prompts
 3.5 Sourcing a File
 3.6 Functions, Aliases, and the Environment

4. External Commands

4.1 PROMPT_COMMAND
 4.2 External Commands in the Prompt
 4.3 What to Put in Your Prompt

5. Xterm Title Bar Manipulations

6. ANSI Escape Sequences: Colours and Cursor Movement

6.1 Colours
 6.2 Cursor Movement
 6.3 Moving the Cursor With tput

7. Special Characters: Octal Escape Sequences

8. The Bash Prompt Package

8.1 Availability
 8.2 Xterm Fonts
 8.3 Changing the Xterm Font

9. Loading a Different Prompt

9.1 Loading a Different Prompt, Later
 9.2 Loading a Different Prompt, Immediately

10. Loading Prompt Colours Dynamically

10.1 A "Proof of Concept" Example

11. Prompt Code Snippets

11.1 Built-in Escape Sequences
 11.2 Date and Time
 11.3 Counting Files in the Current Directory
 11.4 Total Bytes in the Current Directory
 11.5 Checking the Current TTY
 11.6 Suspended Job Count
 11.7 Uptime and Load
 11.8 Number of Processes
 11.9 Controlling the Width of $PWD
 11.10 Laptop Power
 11.11 Having the Prompt Ignored on Cut and Paste
 11.12 Setting the Window Title and Icon Title Separately

12. Example Prompts

12.1 Examples on the Web Over time, many people have e-mailed me excellent examples, and I've written some interesting ones myself. There are far too many to include here, so I have put all of the examples together into some web pages which can be seen at
 12.2 A "Lightweight" Prompt
 12.3 Elite from Bashprompt Themes
 12.4 A "Power User" Prompt
 12.5 Prompt Depending on Connection Type
 12.6 A Prompt the Width of Your Term
 12.7 The Elegant Useless Clock Prompt

______________________________________________________________________

1. Introduction and Administrivia

1.1. Requirements

You will need Bash. The default version for most distributions is
 either 1.14.7, or 2.0.x. 1.14.7 was the standard for years, but is
 slowly being replaced. I've been using Bash 2.0.x for quite a while
 now, but almost all code presented here should work under 1.14.7. If
 I'm aware of a problem, I'll mention it. You can check your Bash
 version by typing echo $BASH_VERSION at the prompt. On my machine, it
 responds with 2.03.6(1)-release.

Shell programming experience would be good, but isn't essential: the
 more you know, the more complex the prompts you'll be able to create.
 I assume a basic knowledge of shell programming and Unix utilities as
 I go through this tutorial. However, my own shell programming skills
 are limited, so I give a lot of examples and explanation that may
 appear unnecessary to an experienced shell programmer.

1.2. How To Use This Document

I include a lot of examples and explanatory text. Different parts
 will be of varying usefulness to different people. This has grown
 long enough that reading it straight through would be difficult - just
 read the sections you need, backtrack as necessary.

1.3. Translations

Japanese: http://www.jf.linux.or.jp/JF/JF-ftp/other-formats/Bash-
 Prompt/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO.html, provided by Akira Endo,
 [email protected].

German: translation is in progress by Thomas Keil, thomas@h-
 preissler.de.

Italian: by Daniel Dui, [email protected], available at
 http://www.crs4.it/~dui/linux.html.

Portugese: translation is in progress by Mrio Gamito,
 [email protected].

Spanish: translation by Iosu Santurtn [email protected] at
 http://mipagina.euskaltel.es/iosus/linux/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO.html.

Dutch: translation is in progress by Ellen Bokhorst [email protected],
 and it will be available at http://www.nl.linux.org/doc/HOWTO.

Chinese: translation in progress by Allen Huang
 [email protected]. I will include a URL when I have it.

Many thanks to all of them! URLs will be included as they're
 available.

If you are working on a translation, please notify me - especially if
 it's available at a linkable URL. Thanks.

1.4. Problems

This is a list of problems I've noticed while programming prompts.
 Don't start reading here, and don't let this list discourage you -
 these are mostly quite minor details. Just check back if you run into
 anything odd.

o Many Bash features (such as math within $(()) among others) are
 compile time options. If you're using a binary distribution such
 as comes with a standard Linux distribution, all such features
 should be compiled in. But if you're working on someone else's
 system, this is worth keeping in mind if something you expected to
 work doesn't. Some notes about this in Learning the Bash Shell,
 p.260-262.

o The terminal screen manager "screen" doesn't always get along with
 ANSI colours. I'm not a screen expert, unfortunately. My current
 version of screen (3.7.6-1, an RPM package) seems to work well in
 all cases, but I've seen occasions where screen reduced all prompt
 colours to the standard foreground colour in X terminals. This
 doesn't appear to be a problem on the console.

o Xdefaults files can override colours. Look in ~/.Xdefaults for
 lines referring to XTerm*background and XTerm*foreground (or
 possibly XTerm*Background and XTerm*Foreground).

o One of the prompts mentioned in this document uses the output of
 "jobs" - as discussed at that time, "jobs" output to a pipe is
 broken in Bash 2.02.

o ANSI cursor movement escape sequences aren't all implemented in all
 X terminals. That's discussed in its own section.

o Some nice looking pseudo-graphics can be created by using a VGA
 font rather than standard Linux fonts. Unfortunately, these
 effects look awful if you don't use a VGA font, and there's no way
 to detect within a term what kind of font it's using.

o Bash 2.0+ is out, and it incorporates some new features, and
 changes some behaviour. Things that work under 1.14.7 don't
 necessarily work the same under 2.0+, or vice versa.

1.5. Send Me Comments and Suggestions

This is a learning experience for me. I've come to know a fair bit
 about what can be done to create interesting and useful Bash Prompts,
 but I need your input to correct and improve this document. I've
 tried to check suggestions I make against different versions of Bash
 (2.0x and 1.14.7), but let me know of any incompatibilities you find.

The latest version of this document should always be available at
 http://www.interlog.com/~giles/bashprompt/. Please check this out,
 and feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] with suggestions.

I use the Linux Documentation Project HOWTOs almost exclusively in the
 HTML format, so when I convert this from SGML (its native format),
 HTML is the only format I check thoroughly. If there are problems
 with other formats, I may not know about them, and I'd appreciate a
 note about them.

1.6. Credits

In producing this document, I have borrowed heavily from the work of
 the Bashprompt project at http://bash.current.nu/. Other sources used
 include the xterm Title mini-HOWTO by Ric Lister, available at
 http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Xterm-Title.html, Ansi Prompts
 by Keebler, available at http://www.ncal.verio.com/~keebler/ansi.html,
 How to make a Bash Prompt Theme by Stephen Webb, available at
 http://bash.current.nu/bash/HOWTO.html, and X ANSI Fonts by Stumpy,
 available at http://home.earthlink.net/~us5zahns/enl/ansifont.html.

Also of immense help were several conversations and e-mails from Dan,
 an ex-co-worker at Georgia College & State University, whose knowledge
 of Unix far exceeds mine. He's given me several excellent
 suggestions, and ideas of his have led to some interesting prompts.

Three books that have been very useful while programming prompts are
 Linux in a Nutshell by Jessica Heckman Perry (O'Reilly, 1997),
 Learning the Bash Shell by Cameron Newham and Bill Rosenblatt
 (O'Reilly, 2nd. ed., 1998) and Unix Shell Programming by Lowell Jay
 Arthur (Wiley, 1986. This is the first edition, the fourth came out
 in 1997).

1.7. Copyright and Disclaimer

This document is copyright 1998-1999 by Giles Orr. You are encouraged
 to redistribute it. You may not modify this document (see the section
 on contacting me: I incorporate most changes recommended by readers).
 Please contact me if you're interested in doing a translation.

This document is available for free, and, while I have done the best I
 can to make it accurate and up to date, I take no responsibility for
 any problems you may encounter resulting from the use of this
 document.

2. Bash and Bash Prompts

2.1. What is Bash?

Descended from the Bourne Shell, Bash is a GNU product, the "Bourne
 Again SHell." It's the standard command line interface on most Linux
 machines. It excels at interactivity, supporting command line
 editing, completion, and recall. It also supports configurable
 prompts - most people realize this, but don't know how much can be
 done.

2.2. What Can Tweaking Your Bash Prompt Do For You?

Most Linux systems have a default prompt in one colour (usually gray)
 that tells you your user name, the name of the machine you're working
 on, and some indication of your current working directory. This is
 all useful information, but you can do much more with the prompt: all
 sorts of information can be displayed (tty number, time, date, load,
 number of users, uptime ...) and the prompt can use ANSI colours,
 either to make it look interesting, or to make certain information
 stand out. You can also manipulate the title bar of an Xterm to
 reflect some of this information.

2.3. Why Bother?

Beyond looking cool, it's often useful to keep track of system
 information. One idea that I know appeals to some people is that it
 makes it possible to put prompts on different machines in different
 colours. If you have several Xterms open on several different
 machines, or if you tend to forget what machine you're working on and
 delete the wrong files (or shut down the server instead of the
 workstation), you'll find this a great way to remember what machine
 you're on.

For myself, I like the utility of having information about my machine
 and work environment available all the time. And I like the challenge
 of trying to figure out how to put the maximum amount of information
 into the smallest possible space while maintaining readability.

2.4. The First Step

The appearance of the prompt is governed by the shell variable PS1.
 Command continuations are indicated by the PS2 string, which can be
 modified in exactly the same ways discussed here - since controlling
 it is exactly the same, and it isn't as "interesting," I'll mostly be
 modifying the PS1 string. (There are also PS3 and PS4 strings. These
 are never seen by the average user - see the Bash man page if you're
 interested in their purpose.) To change the way the prompt looks, you
 change the PS1 variable. For experimentation purposes, you can enter
 the PS1 strings directly at the prompt, and see the results
 immediately (this only affects your current session, and the changes
 go away when you log out). If you want to make a change to the prompt
 permanent, look at the section below ``Setting the PS? Strings
 Permanently''.

Before we get started, it's important to remember that the PS1 string
 is stored in the environment like any other environment variable. If
 you modify it at the command line, your prompt will change. Before
 you make any changes, you can save your current prompt to another
 environment variable:
 [giles@nikola giles]$ SAVE=$PS1
 [giles@nikola giles]$

The simplest prompt would be a single character, such as:

[giles@nikola giles]$ PS1=$
 $ls
 bin mail
 $

This demonstrates the best way to experiment with basic prompts,
 entering them at the command line. Notice that the text entered by
 the user appears immediately after the prompt: I prefer to use

$PS1="$ "
 $ ls
 bin mail
 $

which forces a space after the prompt, making it more readable. To
 restore your original prompt, just call up the variable you stored:

$ PS1=$SAVE
 [giles@nikola giles]$

2.5. Bash Prompt Escape Sequences

There are a lot of escape sequences offered by the Bash shell for
 insertion in the prompt. From the Bash 2.02 man page:

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 cus-
 tomized by inserting a number of backslash-escaped special
 characters that 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
 \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 direc-
 tory
 \! 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

Continuing where we left off:

[giles@nikola giles]$ PS1="\u@\h \W> "
 giles@nikola giles> ls
 bin mail
 giles@nikola giles>

This is similar to the default on most Linux distributions. I wanted
 a slightly different appearance, so I changed this to:

giles@nikola giles> PS1="[\t][\u@\h:\w]\$ "
 [21:52:01][giles@nikola:~]$ ls
 bin mail
 [21:52:15][giles@nikola:~]$

2.6. Setting the PS? Strings Permanently

Various people and distributions set their PS? strings in different
 places. The most common places are /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc,
 ~/.bash_profile, and ~/.bashrc . Johan Kullstam ([email protected])
 writes:

the PS1 string should be set in .bashrc. this is because
 non-interactive bashes go out of their way to unset PS1.
 the bash man page tells how the presence or absence of PS1
 is a good way of knowing whether one is in an interactive vs
 non-interactive (ie script) bash session.

the way i realized this is that startx is a bash script.
 what this means is, startx will wipe out your prompt. when
 you set PS1 in .profile (or .bash_profile), login at
 console, fire up X via startx, your PS1 gets nuked in the
 process leaving you with the default prompt.

one workaround is to launch xterms and rxvts with the -ls
 option to force them to read .profile. but any time a shell
 is called via a non-interactive shell-script middleman PS1
 is lost. system(3) uses sh -c which if sh is bash will kill
 PS1. a better way is to place the PS1 definition in
 .bashrc. this is read every time bash starts and is where
 interactive things - eg PS1 should go.

therefore it should be stressed that PS1=..blah.. should be
 in .bashrc and not .profile.

I tried to duplicate the problem he explains, and encountered a
 different one: my PROMPT_COMMAND variable (which will be introduced
 later) was blown away. My knowledge in this area is somewhat shaky,
 so I'm going to go with what Johan says.

3. Bash Programming and Shell Scripts

3.1. Variables

I'm not going to try to explain all the details of Bash scripting in a
 section of this HOWTO, just the details pertaining to prompts. If you
 want to know more about shell programming and Bash in general, I
 highly recommend Learning the Bash Shell by Cameron Newham and Bill
 Rosenblatt (O'Reilly, 1998). Oddly, my copy of this book is quite
 frayed. Again, I'm going to assume that you know a fair bit about
 Bash already. You can skip this section if you're only looking for
 the basics, but remember it and refer back if you proceed much
 farther.

Variables in Bash are assigned much as they are in any programming
 language:

testvar=5
 foo=zen
 bar="bash prompt"

Quotes are only needed in an assignment if a space (or special
 character, discussed shortly) is a part of the variable.

Variables are referenced slightly differently than they are assigned:

> echo $testvar
 5
 > echo $foo
 zen
 > echo ${bar}
 bash prompt
 > echo $NotAssigned

>

A variable can be referred to as $bar or ${bar}. The braces are
 useful when it is unclear what is being referenced: if I write $barley
 do I mean ${bar}ley or ${barley}? Note also that referencing a value
 that hasn't been assigned doesn't generate an error, instead returning
 nothing.

3.2. Quotes and Special Characters

If you wish to include a special character in a variable, you will
 have to quote it differently:

> newvar=$testvar
 > echo $newvar
 5
 > newvar="$testvar"
 > echo $newvar
 5
 > newvar='$testvar'
 > echo $newvar
 $testvar
 > newvar=\$testvar
 > echo $newvar
 $testvar
 >

The dollar sign isn't the only character that's special to the Bash
 shell, but it's a simple example. An interesting step we can take to
 make use of assigning a variable name to another variable name is to
 use eval to dereference the stored variable name:

> echo $testvar
 5
 > echo $newvar
 $testvar
 > eval echo $newvar
 5
 >

Normally, the shell does only one round of substitutions on the
 expression it is evaluating: if you say echo $newvar the shell will
 only go so far as to determine that $newvar is equal to the text
 string $testvar, it won't evaluate what $testvar is equal to. eval
 forces that evaluation.

3.3. Command Substitution

In almost all cases in this document, I use the $(<command>)
 convention for command substitution: that is,

$(date +%H%M)

means "substitute the output from the date +%H%M command here." This
 works in Bash 2.0+. In some older versions of Bash, prior to 1.14.7,
 you may need to use backquotes (`date +%H%M`). Backquotes can be used
 in Bash 2.0+, but are being phased out in favor of $(), which nests
 better. If you're using an earlier version of Bash, you can usually
 substitute backquotes where you see $(). If the command substitution
 is escaped (ie. \$(command) ), then use backslashes to escape BOTH
 your backquotes (ie. \'command\' ).

3.4. Non-Printing Characters in Prompts

Many of the changes that can be made to Bash prompts that are
 discussed in this HOWTO use non-printing characters. Changing the
 colour of the prompt text, changing an Xterm title bar, and moving the
 cursor position all require non-printing characters.

If I want a very simple prompt consisting of a greater-than sign and a
 space:

[giles@nikola giles]$ PS1='> '
 >

This is just a two character prompt. If I modify it so that it's a
 bright yellow greater-than sign (colours are discussed in their own
 section):

> PS1='\033[1;33m>\033[0m '
 >

This works fine - until you type in a large command line. Because the
 prompt still only consists of two printing characters (a greater-than
 sign and a space) but the shell thinks that this prompt is eleven
 characters long (I think it counts '\033' , '[1' and '[0' as one
 character each). You can see this by typing a really long command
 line - you will find that the shell wraps the text before it gets to
 the edge of the terminal, and in most cases wraps it badly. This is
 because it's confused about the actual length of the prompt.

So use this instead:

> PS1='\[\033[1;33m\]>\[\033[0m\] '

This is more complex, but it works. Command lines wrap properly.
 What's been done is to enclose the '\033[1;33m' that starts the yellow
 colour in square brackets, including the brackets themselves, is a
 non-printing character." The same is done with the '\033[0m' that
 ends the colour.

3.5. Sourcing a File

When a file is sourced (by typing either source filename or .
 filename at the command line), the lines of code in the file are
 executed as if they were printed at the command line. This is
 particularly useful with complex prompts, to allow them to be stored
 in files and called up by sourcing the file they are in.

In examples, you will find that I often include #!/bin/bash at the
 beginning of files including functions. This is not necessary if you
 are sourcing a file, just as it isn't necessary to chmod +x a file
 that is going to be sourced. I do this because it makes Vim (my
 editor of choice, no flames please - you use what you like) think I'm
 editing a shell script and turn on colour syntax highlighting.

3.6. Functions, Aliases, and the Environment

As mentioned earlier, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, and PROMPT_COMMAND are all
 stored in the Bash environment. For those of us coming from a DOS
 background, the idea of tossing big hunks of code into the environment
 is horrifying, because that DOS environment was small, and didn't
 exactly grow well. There are probably practical limits to what you
 can and should put in the environment, but I don't know what they are,
 and we're probably talking a couple of orders of magnitude larger than
 what DOS users are used to. As Dan put it:

"In my interactive shell I have 62 aliases and 25 functions. My rule
 of thumb is that if I need something solely for interactive use and
 can handily write it in bash I make it a shell function (assuming it
 can't be easily expressed as an alias). If these people are worried
 about memory they don't need to be using bash. Bash is one of the
 largest programs I run on my linux box (outside of Oracle). Run top
 sometime and press 'M' to sort by memory - see how close bash is to
 the top of the list. Heck, it's bigger than sendmail! Tell 'em to go
 get ash or something."

I guess he was using console only the day he tried that: running X and
 X apps, I have a lot of stuff larger than Bash. But the idea is the
 same: the environment is something to be used, and don't worry about
 overfilling it.

I risk censure by Unix gurus when I say this (for the crime of over-
 simplification), but functions are basically small shell scripts that
 are loaded into the environment for the purpose of efficiency.
 Quoting Dan again: "Shell functions are about as efficient as they can
 be. It is the approximate equivalent of sourcing a bash/bourne shell
 script save that no file I/O need be done as the function is already
 in memory. The shell functions are typically loaded from [.bashrc or
 .bash_profile] depending on whether you want them only in the initial
 shell or in subshells as well. Contrast this with running a shell
 script: Your shell forks, the child does an exec, potentially the path
 is searched, the kernel opens the file and examines enough bytes to
 determine how to run the file, in the case of a shell script a shell
 must be started with the name of the script as its argument, the shell
 then opens the file, reads it and executes the statements. Compared
 to a shell function, everything other than executing the statements
 can be considered unnecessary overhead."

Aliases are simple to create:

alias d="ls --color=tty --classify"
 alias v="d --format=long"
 alias rm="rm -i"

Any arguments you pass to the alias are passed to the command line of
 the aliased command (ls in the first two cases). Note that aliases
 can be nested, and they can be used to make a normal unix command
 behave in a different way. (I agree with the argument that you
 shouldn't use the latter kind of aliases - if you get in the habit of
 relying on "rm *" to ask you if you're sure, you may lose important
 files on a system that doesn't use your alias.)

Functions are used for more complex program structures. As a general
 rule, use an alias for anything that can be done in one line.
 Functions differ from shell scripts in that they are loaded into the
 environment so that they work more quickly. As a general rule again,
 you would want to keep functions relatively small, and any shell
 script that gets relatively large should remain a shell script rather
 than turning it into a function. Your decision to load something as a
 function is also going to depend on how often you use it. If you use
 a small shell script infrequently, leave it as a shell script. If you
 use it often, turn it into a function.

To modify the behaviour of ls, you could do something like the
 following:

function lf
 {
 ls --color=tty --classify $*
 echo "$(ls -l $* | wc -l) files"
 }

This could readily be set as an alias, but for the sake of example,
 we'll make it a function. If you type the text shown into a text file
 and then source that file, the function will be in your environment,
 and be immediately available at the command line without the overhead
 of a shell script mentioned previously. The usefulness of this
 becomes more obvious if you consider adding more functionality to the
 above function, such as using an if statement to execute some special
 code when links are found in the listing.

4. External Commands

4.1. PROMPT_COMMAND

Bash provides another environment variable called PROMPT_COMMAND. The
 contents of this variable are executed as a regular Bash command just
 before Bash displays a prompt.

[21:55:01][giles@nikola:~] PS1="[\u@\h:\w]\$ "
 [giles@nikola:~] PROMPT_COMMAND="date +%H%M"
 2155
 [giles@nikola:~] d
 bin mail
 2156
 [giles@nikola:~]

What happened above was that I changed PS1 to no longer include the \t
 escape sequence, so the time was no longer a part of the prompt. Then
 I used date +%H%M to display the time in a format I like better. But
 it appears on a different line than the prompt. Tidying this up using
 echo -n ... as shown below works with Bash 2.0+, but appears not to
 work with Bash 1.14.7: apparently the prompt is drawn in a different
 way, and the following method results in overlapping text.

2156
 [giles@nikola:~] PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -n [$(date +%H%M)]"
 [2156][giles@nikola:~]$
 [2156][giles@nikola:~]$ d
 bin mail
 [2157][giles@nikola:~]$ unset PROMPT_COMMAND
 [giles@nikola:~]

echo -n ... controls the output of the date command and supresses the
 trailing newline, allowing the prompt to appear all on one line. At
 the end, I used the unset command to remove the PROMPT_COMMAND
 environment variable.

4.2. External Commands in the Prompt

You can use the output of regular Linux commands directly in the
 prompt as well. Obviously, you don't want to insert a lot of
 material, or it will create a large prompt. You also want to use a
 fast command, because it's going to be executed every time your prompt
 appears on the screen, and delays in the appearance of your prompt
 while you're working can be very annoying. (Unlike the previous
 example that this closely resembles, this does work with Bash 1.14.7.)

[21:58:33][giles@nikola:~]$ PS1="[\$(date +%H%M)][\u@\h:\w]\$ "
 [2159][giles@nikola:~]$ ls
 bin mail
 [2200][giles@nikola:~]$

It's important to notice the backslash before the dollar sign of the
 command substitution. Without it, the external command is executed
 exactly once: when the PS1 string is read into the environment. For
 this prompt, that would mean that it would display the same time no
 matter how long the prompt was used. The backslash protects the
 contents of $() from immediate shell interpretation, so "date" is
 called every time a prompt is generated.

Linux comes with a lot of small utility programs like date, grep, or
 wc that allow you to manipulate data. If you find yourself trying to
 create complex combinations of these programs within a prompt, it may
 be easier to make an alias, function, or shell script of your own, and
 call it from the prompt. Escape sequences are often required in bash
 shell scripts to ensure that shell variables are expanded at the
 correct time (as seen above with the date command): this is raised to
 another level within the prompt PS1 line, and avoiding it by creating
 functions is a good idea.

An example of a small shell script used within a prompt is given
 below:

______________________________________________________________________
 #!/bin/bash
 # lsbytesum - sum the number of bytes in a directory listing
 TotalBytes=0
 for Bytes in $(ls -l | grep "^-" | cut -c30-41)
 do
 let TotalBytes=$TotalBytes+$Bytes
 done
 TotalMeg=$(echo -e "scale=3 \n$TotalBytes/1048576 \nquit" | bc)
 echo -n "$TotalMeg"
 ______________________________________________________________________

I have at times kept this both as a function, or as a shell script in
 my ~/bin directory, which is on my path. Used in a prompt:

[2158][giles@nikola:~]$ PS1="[\u@\h:\w (\$(lsbytesum) Mb)]\$ "
 [giles@nikola:~ (0 Mb)]$ cd /bin
 [giles@nikola:/bin (4.498 Mb)]$

4.3. What to Put in Your Prompt

You'll find I put username, machine name, time, and current directory
 name in most of my prompts. With the exception of the time, these are
 very standard items to find in a prompt, and time is probably the next
 most common addition. But what you include is entirely a matter of
 personal taste. Here are examples from people I know to help give you
 ideas.

Dan's prompt is minimal but very effective, particularly for the way
 he works.

[giles@nikola:~]$ cur_tty=$(tty | sed -e "s/.*tty\(.*\)/\1/")
 [giles@nikola:~]$ echo $cur_tty
 p4
 [giles@nikola:~]$ PS1="\!,$cur_tty,\$?\$ "
 1095,p4,0$

Dan doesn't like that having the current working directory can resize
 the prompt drastically as you move through the directory tree, so he
 keeps track of that in his head (or types "pwd"). He learned Unix
 with csh and tcsh, so he uses his command history extensively
 (something many of us weened on Bash do not do), so the first item in
 the prompt is the history number. The second item is the significant
 characters of the tty (the output of "tty" is cropped with sed), an
 item that can be useful to "screen" users. The third item is the exit
 value of the last command/pipeline (note that this is rendered useless
 by any command executed within the prompt - you could work around that
 by capturing it to a variable and playing it back, though). Finally,
 the "\$" is a dollar sign for a regular user, and switches to a hash
 mark ("#") if the user is root.

Torben Fjerdingstad ([email protected]) wrote to tell me that he
 often suspends jobs and then forgets about them. He uses his prompt
 to remind himself of suspended jobs:

[giles@nikola:~]$ function jobcount {
 > jobs|wc -l| awk '{print $1}'
 > }
 [giles@nikola:~]$ export PS1='\W[`jobcount`]# '
 giles[0]# man ls &
 [1] 4150

[1]+ Stopped (tty output) man ls
 giles[1]#

Torben uses awk to trim the whitespace from the output of wc, while I
 would have used sed or tr - not because they're better, but because
 I'm more familiar with them. There are probably other ways as well.
 Torben also surrounds his PS1 string in single quotes, which prevent
 Bash from immediately interpreting the backquotes, so he doesn't have
 to escape them as I have mentioned.

NOTE: There is a known bug in Bash 2.02 that causes the jobs command
 (a shell builtin) to return nothing to a pipe. If you try the above
 under Bash 2.02, you will always get a "0" back regardless of how many
 jobs you have suspended. This problem is fixed in 2.03.

5. Xterm Title Bar Manipulations

Non-printing escape sequences can be used to produce interesting
 effects in prompts. To use these escape sequences, you need to
 enclose them in \[ and \] (as discussed in ``Non-Printing Characters
 in Prompts''), telling Bash to ignore this material while calculating
 the size of the prompt. Failing to include these delimiters results
 in line editing code placing the cursor incorrectly because it doesn't
 know the actual size of the prompt. Escape sequences must also be
 preceded by \033[ in Bash prior to version 2, or by either \033[ or
 \e[ in later versions.

If you try to change the title bar of your Xterm with your prompt when
 you're at the console, you'll produce garbage in your prompt. To
 avoid this, test the TERM environment variable to tell if your prompt
 is going to be in an Xterm.

______________________________________________________________________
 function proml
 {
 case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 local TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 local TITLEBAR=''
 ;;
 esac

PS1="${TITLEBAR}\
 [\$(date +%H%M)]\
 [\u@\h:\w]\
 \$ "
 PS2='> '
 PS4='+ '
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

This is a function that can be incorporated into ~/.bashrc. The
 function name could then be called to execute the function. The
 function, like the PS1 string, is stored in the environment. Once the
 PS1 string is set by the function, you can remove the function from
 the environment with unset proml. Since the prompt can't change from
 being in an Xterm to being at the console, the TERM variable isn't
 tested every time the prompt is generated. I used continuation
 markers (backslashes) in the definition of the prompt, to allow it to
 be continued on multiple lines. This improves readability, making it
 easier to modify and debug.

I define this as a function because this is how the Bashprompt package
 (discussed later in this document: ``The Bash Prompt Package'') deals
 with prompts: it's not the only way to do it, but it works well. As
 the prompts you use become more complex, it becomes more and more
 cumbersome to type them in at the prompt, and more practical to make
 them into some sort of text file. In this case, to test this at the
 prompt, save the above as a text file called "proml". You can work
 with it as follows:

[giles@nikola:/bin (4.498 Mb)]$ cd -> Go where you want to save the prompt
 [giles@nikola:~ (0 Mb)]$ vi proml -> Edit the prompt file
 ... -> Enter the text given above
 [giles@nikola:~ (0 Mb)]$ source proml -> Read the prompt function
 [giles@nikola:~ (0 Mb)]$ proml -> Execute the prompt function

The first step in creating this prompt is to test if the shell we're
 starting is an xterm or not: if it is, the shell variable
 (${TITLEBAR}) is defined. It consists of the appropriate escape
 sequences, and \u@\h:\w, which puts <user>@<machine>:<working
 directory> in the Xterm title bar. This is particularly useful with
 minimized Xterms, making them more rapidly identifiable. The other
 material in this prompt should be familiar from previous prompts we've
 created.

The only drawback to manipulating the Xterm title bar like this occurs
 when you log into a system on which you haven't set up the title bar
 hack: the Xterm will continue to show the information from the
 previous system that had the title bar hack in place.

6. ANSI Escape Sequences: Colours and Cursor Movement

6.1. Colours

As mentioned before, non-printing escape sequences have to be enclosed
 in \[\033[ and \]. For colour escape sequences, they should also be
 followed by a lowercase m.

If you try out the following prompts in an xterm and find that you
 aren't seeing the colours named, check out your ~/.Xdefaults file (and
 possibly its bretheren) for lines like "XTerm*Foreground:
 BlanchedAlmond". This can be commented out by placing an exclamation
 mark ("!") in front of it. Of course, this will also be dependent on
 what terminal emulator you're using. This is the likeliest place that
 your term foreground colours would be overridden.

To include blue text in the prompt:

PS1="\[\033[34m\][\$(date +%H%M)][\u@\h:\w]$ "

The problem with this prompt is that the blue colour that starts with
 the 34 colour code is never switched back to the regular colour, so
 any text you type after the prompt is still in the colour of the
 prompt. This is also a dark shade of blue, so combining it with the
 bold code might help:

PS1="\[\033[1;34m\][\$(date +%H%M)][\u@\h:\w]$\[\033[0m\] "

The prompt is now in light blue, and it ends by switching the colour
 back to nothing (whatever foreground colour you had previously).

Here are the rest of the colour equivalences:

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

Daniel Dui ([email protected]) points out that to be strictly accurate, we
 must mention that the list above is for colours at the console. In an
 xterm, the code 1;31 isn't "Light Red," but "Bold Red." This is true
 of all the colours.

You can also set background colours by using 44 for Blue background,
 41 for a Red background, etc. There are no bold background colours.
 Combinations can be used, like Light Red text on a Blue background:
 \[\033[44;1;31m\], although setting the colours separately seems to
 work better (ie. \[\033[44m\]\[\033[1;31m\]). Other codes available
 include 4: Underscore, 5: Blink, 7: Inverse, and 8: Concealed.

Aside: Many people (myself included) object strongly to the "blink"
 attribute. Fortunately, it doesn't work in any terminal emulators
 that I'm aware of - but it will still work on the console. And, if
 you were wondering (as I did) "What use is a 'Concealed' attribute?!"
 - I saw it used in an example shell script (not a prompt) to allow
 someone to type in a password without it being echoed to the screen.

Based on a prompt called "elite2" in the Bashprompt package (which I
 have modified to work better on a standard console, rather than with
 the special xterm fonts required to view the original properly), this
 is a prompt I've used a lot:

______________________________________________________________________

function elite
 {

local GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
 local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
 local CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\]"
 local LIGHT_CYAN="\[\033[1;36m\]"

case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 local TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 local TITLEBAR=""
 ;;
 esac

local GRAD1=$(tty|cut -d/ -f3)
 PS1="$TITLEBAR\
 $GRAY-$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
 $CYAN\u$GRAY@$CYAN\h\
 $LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
 $CYAN\#$GRAY/$CYAN$GRAD1\
 $LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
 $CYAN\$(date +%H%M)$GRAY/$CYAN\$(date +%d-%b-%y)\
 $LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$GRAY-\
 $LIGHT_GRAY\n\
 $GRAY-$CYAN-$LIGHT_CYAN(\
 $CYAN\$$GRAY:$CYAN\w\
 $LIGHT_CYAN)$CYAN-$GRAY-$LIGHT_GRAY "
 PS2="$LIGHT_CYAN-$CYAN-$GRAY-$LIGHT_GRAY "
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

I define the colours as temporary shell variables in the name of
 readability. It's easier to work with. The "GRAD1" variable is a
 check to determine what terminal you're on. Like the test to
 determine if you're working in an Xterm, it only needs to be done
 once. The prompt you see look like this, except in colour:

--(giles@nikola)-(75/ttyp7)-(1908/12-Oct-98)--
 --($:~/tmp)--

To help myself remember what colours are available, I wrote the
 following script which echoes all the colours to screen:

______________________________________________________________________
 #!/bin/bash
 #
 # This file echoes a bunch of colour codes to the terminal to demonstrate
 # what's available. Each line is one colour on black and gray
 # backgrounds, with the code in the middle. Verified to work on white,
 # black, and green BGs (2 Dec 98).
 #
 echo " On Light Gray: On Black:"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;37m White \033[0m\
 1;37m \
 \033[40m\033[1;37m White \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[37m Light Gray \033[0m\
 37m \
 \033[40m\033[37m Light Gray \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;30m Gray \033[0m\
 1;30m \
 \033[40m\033[1;30m Gray \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[30m Black \033[0m\
 30m \
 \033[40m\033[30m Black \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[31m Red \033[0m\
 31m \
 \033[40m\033[31m Red \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;31m Light Red \033[0m\
 1;31m \
 \033[40m\033[1;31m Light Red \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[32m Green \033[0m\
 32m \
 \033[40m\033[32m Green \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;32m Light Green \033[0m\
 1;32m \
 \033[40m\033[1;32m Light Green \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[33m Brown \033[0m\
 33m \
 \033[40m\033[33m Brown \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;33m Yellow \033[0m\
 1;33m \
 \033[40m\033[1;33m Yellow \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[34m Blue \033[0m\
 34m \
 \033[40m\033[34m Blue \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;34m Light Blue \033[0m\
 1;34m \
 \033[40m\033[1;34m Light Blue \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[35m Purple \033[0m\
 35m \
 \033[40m\033[35m Purple \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;35m Pink \033[0m\
 1;35m \
 \033[40m\033[1;35m Pink \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[36m Cyan \033[0m\
 36m \
 \033[40m\033[36m Cyan \033[0m"
 echo -e "\033[47m\033[1;36m Light Cyan \033[0m\
 1;36m \
 \033[40m\033[1;36m Light Cyan \033[0m"
 ______________________________________________________________________

6.2. Cursor Movement

ANSI escape sequences allow you to move the cursor around the screen
 at will. This is more useful for full screen user interfaces
 generated by shell scripts, but can also be used in prompts. The
 movement escape sequences are as follows:

- Position the Cursor:
 \033[<L>;<C>H
 Or
 \033[<L>;<C>f
 puts the cursor at line L and column C.
 - Move the cursor up N lines:
 \033[<N>A
 - Move the cursor down N lines:
 \033[<N>B
 - Move the cursor forward N columns:
 \033[<N>C
 - Move the cursor backward N columns:
 \033[<N>D

- Clear the screen, move to (0,0):
 \033[2J
 - Erase to end of line:
 \033[K

- Save cursor position:
 \033[s
 - Restore cursor position:
 \033[u

The latter two codes are NOT honoured by many terminal emulators. The
 only ones that I'm aware of that do are xterm and nxterm - even though
 the majority of terminal emulators are based on xterm code. As far as
 I can tell, rxvt, kvt, xiterm, and Eterm do not support them. They
 are supported on the console.

Try putting in the following line of code at the prompt (it's a little
 clearer what it does if the prompt is several lines down the terminal
 when you put this in): echo -en "\033[7A\033[1;35m BASH
 \033[7B\033[6D" This should move the cursor seven lines up screen,
 print the word " BASH ", and then return to where it started to
 produce a normal prompt. This isn't a prompt: it's just a
 demonstration of moving the cursor on screen, using colour to
 emphasize what has been done.

Save this in a file called "clock":

______________________________________________________________________
 #!/bin/bash

function prompt_command {
 let prompt_x=$COLUMNS-5
 }

PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

function clock {
 local BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
 local RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
 local LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1;31m\]"
 local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
 local NO_COLOUR="\[\033[0m\]"
 case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 TITLEBAR=""
 ;;
 esac

PS1="${TITLEBAR}\
 \[\033[s\033[1;\$(echo -n \${prompt_x})H\]\
 $BLUE[$LIGHT_RED\$(date +%H%M)$BLUE]\[\033[u\033[1A\]
 $BLUE[$LIGHT_RED\u@\h:\w$BLUE]\
 $WHITE\$$NO_COLOUR "
 PS2='> '
 PS4='+ '
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

This prompt is fairly plain, except that it keeps a 24 hour clock in
 the upper right corner of the terminal (even if the terminal is
 resized). This will NOT work on the terminal emulators that I
 mentioned that don't accept the save and restore cursor position
 codes. If you try to run this prompt in any of those terminal
 emulators, the clock will appear correctly, but the prompt will be
 trapped on the second line of the terminal.

See also ``The Elegant Useless Clock Prompt'' for a more extensive use
 of these codes.

6.3. Moving the Cursor With tput

As with so many things in Unix, there is more than one way to achieve
 the same ends. A utility called "tput" can also be used to move the
 cursor around the screen, or get back information about the status of
 the terminal. "tput" for cursor positioning is less flexible than
 ANSI escape sequences: you can only move the cursor to an absolute
 position, you can't move it relative to its current position. I don't
 use "tput," so I'm not going to explain it in detail. Type "man tput"
 and you'll know as much as I do.

7. Special Characters: Octal Escape Sequences

Outside of the characters that you can type on your keyboard, there
 are a lot of other characters you can print on your screen. I've
 created a script to allow you to check out what the font you're using
 has available for you. The main command you need to use to utilise
 these characters is "echo -e". The "-e" switch tells echo to enable
 interpretation of backslash-escaped characters. What you see when you
 look at octal 200-400 will be very different with a VGA font from what
 you will see with a standard Linux font. Be warned that some of these
 escape sequences have odd effects on your terminal, and I haven't
 tried to prevent them from doing whatever they do. The linedraw and
 block characters (which many of us became familiar with with Word
 Perfect) that are used heavily by the Bashprompt project are between
 octal 260 and 337.

______________________________________________________________________
 #!/bin/bash

# Script: escgen

function usage {
 echo -e "\033[1;34mescgen\033[0m <lower_octal_value> [<higher_octal_value>]"
 echo " Octal escape sequence generator: print all octal escape sequences"
 echo " between the lower value and the upper value. If a second value"
 echo " isn't supplied, print eight characters."
 echo " 1998 - Giles Orr, no warranty."
 exit 1
 }

if [ "$#" -eq "0" ]
 then
 echo -e "\033[1;31mPlease supply one or two values.\033[0m"
 usage
 fi
 let lower_val=${1}
 if [ "$#" -eq "1" ]
 then
 # If they don't supply a closing value, give them eight characters.
 upper_val=$(echo -e "obase=8 \n ibase=8 \n $lower_val+10 \n quit" | bc)
 else
 let upper_val=${2}
 fi
 if [ "$#" -gt "2" ]
 then
 echo -e "\033[1;31mPlease supply two values.\033[0m"
 echo
 usage
 fi
 if [ "${lower_val}" -gt "${upper_val}" ]
 then
 echo -e "\033[1;31m${lower_val} is larger than ${upper_val}."
 echo
 usage
 fi
 if [ "${upper_val}" -gt "777" ]
 then
 echo -e "\033[1;31mValues cannot exceed 777.\033[0m"
 echo
 usage
 fi

let i=$lower_val
 let line_count=1
 let limit=$upper_val
 while [ "$i" -lt "$limit" ]
 do
 octal_escape="\\$i"
 echo -en "$i:'$octal_escape' "
 if [ "$line_count" -gt "7" ]
 then
 echo
 # Put a hard return in.
 let line_count=0
 fi
 let i=$(echo -e "obase=8 \n ibase=8 \n $i+1 \n quit" | bc)
 let line_count=$line_count+1
 done
 echo
 ______________________________________________________________________

You can also use xfd to display all the characters in an X font, with
 the command "xfd -fn <fontname>". Clicking on any given character
 will give you lots of information about that character, including its
 octal value. The script given above will be useful on the console,
 and if you aren't sure of the current font name.

8. The Bash Prompt Package

8.1. Availability

The Bash Prompt package is available at http://bash.current.nu, and is
 the work of several people, co-ordinated by Rob Current (aka
 BadLandZ). The package is an early beta, but offers a simple way of
 using multiple prompts (or themes), allowing you to set prompts for
 login shells, and for subshells (ie. putting PS1 strings in
 ~/.bash_profile and ~/.bashrc). Most of the themes use the extended
 VGA character set, so they look bad unless they're used with VGA fonts
 (which aren't the default on most systems).

8.2. Xterm Fonts

To use some of the most attractive prompts in the Bash Prompt package,
 you need to get and install fonts that support the character sets
 expected by the prompts. These are "VGA Fonts," which support
 different character sets than regular Xterm fonts. Standard Xterm
 fonts support an extended alphabet, including a lot of letters with
 accents. In VGA fonts, this material is replaced by graphical
 characters - blocks, dots, lines. I asked for an explanation of this
 difference, and Srgio Vale e Pace ([email protected]) wrote me:

I love computer history so here goes:

When IBM designed the first PC they needed some character
 codes to use, so they got the ASCII character table (128
 numbers, letters, and some punctuation) and to fill a byte
 addressed table they added 128 more characters. Since the
 PC was designed to be a home computer, they fill the
 remaining 128 characters with dots, lines, points, etc, to
 be able to do borders, and grayscale effects (remember that
 we are talking about 2 color graphics).

Time passes, PCs become a standard, IBM creates more
 powerful systems and the VGA standard is born, along with
 256 colour graphics, and IBM continues to include their IBM-
 ASCII characters table.

More time passes, IBM has lost their leadership in the PC
 market, and the OS authors dicover that there are other
 languages in the world that use non-english characters, so
 they add international alphabet support in their systems.
 Since we now have bright and colorful screens, we can trash
 the dots, lines, etc. and use their space for accented
 characters and some greek letters, which you'll see in
 Linux.

8.3. Changing the Xterm Font

Getting and installing these fonts is a somewhat involved process.
 First, retrieve the font(s). Next, ensure they're .pcf or .pcf.gz
 files. If they're .bdf files, investigate the "bdftopcf" command (ie.
 read the man page). Drop the .pcf or .pcf.gz files into the
 /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc dir (this is the correct directory for
 RedHat 5.1 and Slackware 3.4, it may be different on other
 distributions). "cd" to that directory, and run the "mkfontdir"
 command. Then run "xset fp rehash". Sometimes it's a good idea to go
 into the fonts.alias file in the same directory, and create shorter
 alias names for the fonts.

To use the new fonts, you start your Xterm program of choice with the
 appropriate command to your Xterm, which can be found either in the
 man page or by using the "--help" parameter on the command line.
 Popular terms would be used as follows:

xterm -font <fontname>

OR

xterm -fn <fontname> -fb <fontname-bold>
 Eterm -F <fontname>
 rxvt -fn <fontname>

VGA fonts are available from Stumpy's ANSI Fonts page at
 http://home.earthlink.net/~us5zahns/enl/ansifont.html (which I have
 borrowed from extensively while writing this).

9. Loading a Different Prompt

9.1. Loading a Different Prompt, Later

The explanations in this HOWTO have shown how to make PS1 environment
 variables, or how to incorporate those PS1 and PS2 strings into
 functions that could be called by ~/.bashrc or as a theme by the
 bashprompt package.

Using the bashprompt package, you would type bashprompt -i to see a
 list of available themes. To set the prompt in future login shells
 (primarily the console, but also telnet and Xterms, depending on how
 your Xterms are set up), you would type bashprompt -l themename.
 bashprompt then modifies your ~/.bash_profile to call the requested
 theme when it starts. To set the prompt in future subshells (usually
 Xterms, rxvt, etc.), you type bashprompt -s themename, and bashprompt
 modifies your ~/.bashrc file to call the appropriate theme at startup.

See also ``Setting the PS? Strings Permanently'' for Johan Kullstam's
 note regarding the importance of putting the PS? strings in ~/.bashrc
 .

9.2. Loading a Different Prompt, Immediately

You can change the prompt in your current terminal (using the example
 "elite" function above) by typing "source elite" followed by "elite"
 (assuming that the elite function file is the working directory).
 This is somewhat cumbersome, and leaves you with an extra function
 (elite) in your environment space - if you want to clean up the
 environment, you would have to type "unset elite" as well. This would
 seem like an ideal candidate for a small shell script, but a script
 doesn't work here because the script cannot change the environment of
 your current shell: it can only change the environment of the subshell
 it runs in. As soon as the script stops, the subshell goes away, and
 the changes the script made to the environment are gone. What can
 change environment variables of your current shell are environment
 functions. The bashprompt package puts a function called
 "callbashprompt" into your environment, and, while they don't document
 it, it can be called to load any bashprompt theme on the fly. It
 looks in the theme directory it installed (the theme you're calling
 has to be there), sources the function you asked for, loads the
 function, and then unsets the function, thus keeping your environment
 uncluttered. "callbashprompt" wasn't intended to be used this way,
 and has no error checking, but if you keep that in mind, it works
 quite well.

10. Loading Prompt Colours Dynamically

10.1. A "Proof of Concept" Example

This is a "proof of concept" more than an attractive prompt: changing
 colours within the prompt dynamically. In this example, the colour of
 the host name changes depending on the load (as a warning).

______________________________________________________________________
 #!/bin/bash
 # "hostloadcolour" - 17 October 98, by Giles
 #
 # The idea here is to change the colour of the host name in the prompt,
 # depending on a threshold load value.

# THRESHOLD_LOAD is the value of the one minute load (multiplied
 # by one hundred) at which you want
 # the prompt to change from COLOUR_LOW to COLOUR_HIGH
 THRESHOLD_LOAD=200
 COLOUR_LOW='1;34'
 # light blue
 COLOUR_HIGH='1;31'
 # light red

function prompt_command {
 ONE=$(uptime | sed -e "s/.*load average: \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\)/\1/" -e "s/ //g")
 # Apparently, "scale" in bc doesn't apply to multiplication, but does
 # apply to division.
 ONEHUNDRED=$(echo -e "scale=0 \n $ONE/0.01 \nquit \n" | bc)
 if [ $ONEHUNDRED -gt $THRESHOLD_LOAD ]
 then
 HOST_COLOUR=$COLOUR_HIGH
 # Light Red
 else
 HOST_COLOUR=$COLOUR_LOW
 # Light Blue
 fi
 }

function hostloadcolour {

PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command
 PS1="[$(date +%H%M)][\u@\[\033[\$(echo -n \$HOST_COLOUR)m\]\h\[\033[0m\]:\w]$ "
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

Using your favorite editor, save this to a file named
 "hostloadcolour". If you have the Bashprompt package installed, this
 will work as a theme. If you don't, type source hostloadcolour and
 then hostloadcolour. Either way, "prompt_command" becomes a function
 in your environment. If you examine the code, you will notice that
 the colours ($COLOUR_HIGH and $COLOUR_LOW) are set using only a
 partial colour code, ie. "1;34" instead of "\[\033[1;34m\]", which I
 would have preferred. I have been unable to get it to work with the
 complete code. Please let me know if you manage this.

11. Prompt Code Snippets

This section shows how to put various pieces of information into the
 Bash prompt. There are an infinite number of things that could be put
 in your prompt. Feel free to send me examples, I will try to include
 what I think will be most widely used. If you have an alternate way
 to retrieve a piece of information here, and feel your method is more
 efficient, please contact me. It's easy to write bad code, I do it
 often, but it's great to write elegant code, and a pleasure to read
 it. I manage it every once in a while, and would love to have more of
 it to put in here.

To incorporate shell code in prompts, it has to be escaped. Usually,
 this will mean putting it inside \$(<command>) so that the output of
 command is substituted each time the prompt is generated.

11.1. Built-in Escape Sequences

See ``Bash Prompt Escape Sequences'' for a complete list of built-in
 escape sequences. This list is taken directly from the Bash man page,
 so you can also look there.

11.2. Date and Time

If you don't like the built-ins for date and time, extracting the same
 information from the date command is relatively easy. Examples
 already seen in this HOWTO include date +%H%M, which will put in the
 hour in 24 hour format, and the minute. date "+%A, %d %B %Y" will
 give something like "Sunday, 06 June 1999". For a full list of the
 interpreted sequences, type date --help or man date.

11.3. Counting Files in the Current Directory

To determine how many files there are in the current directory, put in
 ls -l | wc -l. This uses wc wordcount to do a count of the number of
 lines (-l) in the output of ls -l. It doesn't count dotfiles. If you
 want to count only files and NOT include symbolic links (just an
 example of what else you could do), you could use ls -l | grep -v ^l |
 wc -l. Here, grep checks for any line beginning with "l" (indicating
 a link), and discards that line (-v).

11.4. Total Bytes in the Current Directory

If you want to know how much space the contents of the current
 directory take up, you can use something like the following:

______________________________________________________________________
 # The sed command replaces all the spaces with only one space.
 # cut -d" " -f5 : -d determines a delimiter, which means that (in
 # this case) a space begins a new column.
 # -f says to take out a certain column, in this case the fifth one

let TotalBytes=0

for Bytes in $(ls -l | grep "^-" | sed -e "s/ \+/ /g" | cut -d" " -f5)
 do
 let TotalBytes=$TotalBytes+$Bytes
 done

# The if...fi's give a more specific output in byte, kilobyte, megabyte,
 # and gigabyte

if [ $TotalBytes -lt 1024 ]; then
 TotalSize=$(echo -e "scale=3 \n$TotalBytes \nquit" | bc)
 else if [ $TotalBytes -lt 1048576 ]; then
 TotalSize=$(echo -e "scale=3 \n$TotalBytes/1024 \nquit" | bc)
 else if [ $TotalBytes -lt 1073741824 ]; then
 TotalSize=$(echo -e "scale=3 \n$TotalBytes/1048576 \nquit" | bc)
 else
 TotalSize=$(echo -e "scale=3 \n$TotalBytes/1073741824 \nquit" | bc)
 fi
 fi
 fi
 ______________________________________________________________________

Code courtesy of Sam Schmit ([email protected]) and his uncle Jean-Paul, who
 ironed out a fairly major bug in my original code, and just generally
 cleaned it up.

11.5. Checking the Current TTY

The tty command returns the filename of the terminal connected to
 standard input. This comes in two formats on the Linux systems I have
 used, either "/dev/tty4" or "/dev/pts/2". I have taken to using a
 more general solution to this: tty | sed -e "s:/dev/::", which removes
 the leading "/dev/". Older systems (in my experience, RedHat through
 5.2) returned only filenames in the "/dev/tty4" format, so I used tty
 | sed -e "s/.*tty\(.*\)/\1/".

An alternative method: ps aux | grep $$ | awk '{ print $7 }'.

11.6. Suspended Job Count

To find out how many suspended jobs you have, use jobs | wc -l | awk
 otherwise include blank spaces that waste space in a prompt. If you
 start netscape from an xterm, this will also be counted. If you want
 to avoid that, and only count stopped jobs, use jobs -s instead. Type
 help jobs for more info on jobs. jobs will always return nothing to a
 pipe in version 2.02 of Bash: this problem is not present in any other
 version.

11.7. Uptime and Load

Current load is taken from the uptime command. What I use at the
 moment is uptime | sed -e "s/.*load average: \(.*\...\), .*\...,
 .*\.../\1/" -e "s/ //g" which is clunky in the extreme, but works.
 Replacements welcome. uptime can also be used in a very similar
 manner to find out how long the machine has been up (obviously) or how
 many users are logged in, and the data could be massaged with sed to
 look the way you want it to.

11.8. Number of Processes

ps ax | wc -l | tr -d " " OR ps ax | wc -l | awk each case, tr or awk
 or sed is used to remove the undesirable whitespace.

11.9. Controlling the Width of $PWD

Unix allows long file names, which can lead to the value of $PWD being
 very long. Some people (notably the default RedHat prompt) choose to
 use the basename of the current working directory (ie. "giles" if
 $PWD="/home/giles"). I like more info than that, but it's often
 desirable to limit the length of the directory name, and it makes the
 most sense to truncate on the left.

______________________________________________________________________
 # How many characters of the $PWD should be kept
 local pwd_length=30
 if [ $(echo -n $PWD | wc -c | tr -d " ") -gt $pwd_length ]
 then
 newPWD="...$(echo -n $PWD | sed -e "s/.*\(.\{$pwd_length\}\)/\1/")"
 else
 newPWD="$(echo -n $PWD)"
 fi
 ______________________________________________________________________

The above code can be executed as part of PROMPT_COMMAND, and the
 environment variable generated (newPWD) can then be included in the
 prompt.

11.10. Laptop Power

Again, this isn't elegant, but it works (most of the time). If you
 have a laptop with APM installed, try power=$(apm | sed -e "s/.*:
 \([1-9][0-9]*\)%/\1/" | tr -d " ") executed from PROMPT_COMMAND to
 create an environment variable you can add to your prompt. This will
 indicate percentage power remaining.

11.11. Having the Prompt Ignored on Cut and Paste

This one is weird but cool. Rory Toma ([email protected]) wrote to
 suggest a prompt like this: : rory@demon ; . How is this useful?
 Well, if you type a command after the prompt (odd idea, that), you can
 triple click on that line (in Linux, anyway) to highlight the whole
 line, then paste that line in front of another prompt, and the stuff
 between the ":" and the """ is ignored, like so:

______________________________________________________________________
 : rory@demon ; uptime
 5:15pm up 6 days, 23:04, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
 : rory@demon ; : rory@demon ; uptime
 5:15pm up 6 days, 23:04, 2 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
 ______________________________________________________________________

The prompt is a no-op, and if your PS2 is set to a space, multiple
 lines can be cut and pasted as well.

11.12. Setting the Window Title and Icon Title Separately

A suggestion from Charles Lepple ([email protected]) on setting
 the window title of the Xterm and the title of the corresponding icon
 separately (first check out the earlier section ``Xterm Title Bar
 Manipulations''). He uses this under WindowMaker because the title
 that's appropriate for an Xterm is usually too long for a 64x64 icon.
 "\[\e]1;icon-title\007\e]2;main-title\007\]". He says to set this in
 the prompt command because "I tried putting the string in PS1, but it
 causes flickering under some window managers because it results in
 setting the prompt multiple times when you are editing a multi-line
 command (at least under bash 1.4.x -- and I was too lazy to fully
 explore the reasons behind it)." I had no trouble with it in the PS1
 string, but didn't use any multi-line commands. He also points out
 that it works under xterm, xwsh, and dtterm, but not gnome-terminal
 (which uses only the main title). I also found it to work with rxvt,
 but not kterm.

12. Example Prompts

12.1. Over time, many people have e-mailed me excellent examples, and
 I've written some interesting ones myself. There are far too many to
 include here, so I have put all of the examples together into some web
 pages which can be seen athttp://www.interlog.com/~giles/bash-
 prompt/prompts. Web pages also allow me to include pictures, which I
 can't include in a standard HOWTO. All of the examples given here
 except Bradley Alexander's "Prompts Depending on Connection Types" can
 also be seen on the web. Examples on the Web

12.2. A "Lightweight" Prompt

______________________________________________________________________

function proml {
 local BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
 local RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
 local LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1;31m\]"
 local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
 local NO_COLOUR="\[\033[0m\]"
 case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 TITLEBAR=""
 ;;
 esac

PS1="${TITLEBAR}\
 $BLUE[$RED\$(date +%H%M)$BLUE]\
 $BLUE[$LIGHT_RED\u@\h:\w$BLUE]\
 $WHITE\$$NO_COLOUR "
 PS2='> '
 PS4='+ '
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

12.3. Elite from Bashprompt Themes

Note that this requires a VGA font.

______________________________________________________________________

# Created by KrON from windowmaker on IRC
 # Changed by Spidey 08/06
 function elite {
 PS1="\[\033[31m\]\332\304\[\033[34m\](\[\033[31m\]\u\[\033[34m\]@\[\033[31m\]\h\
 \[\033[34m\])\[\033[31m\]-\[\033[34m\](\[\033[31m\]\$(date +%I:%M%P)\
 \[\033[34m\]-:-\[\033[31m\]\$(date +%m)\[\033[34m\033[31m\]/\$(date +%d)\
 \[\033[34m\])\[\033[31m\]\304-\[\033[34m]\\371\[\033[31m\]-\371\371\
 \[\033[34m\]\372\n\[\033[31m\]\300\304\[\033[34m\](\[\033[31m\]\W\[\033[34m\])\
 \[\033[31m\]\304\371\[\033[34m\]\372\[\033[00m\]"
 PS2="> "
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

12.4. A "Power User" Prompt

I actually do use this prompt, but it results in noticeable delays in
 the appearance of the prompt on a single-user PII-400, so I wouldn't
 recommend using it on a multi-user P-100 or anything ... Look at it
 for ideas, rather than as a practical prompt.

______________________________________________________________________

#!/bin/bash
 #----------------------------------------------------------------------
 # POWER USER PROMPT "pprom2"
 #----------------------------------------------------------------------
 #
 # Created August 98, Last Modified 9 November 98 by Giles
 #
 # Problem: when load is going down, it says "1.35down-.08", get rid
 # of the negative

function prompt_command
 {
 # Create TotalMeg variable: sum of visible file sizes in current directory
 local TotalBytes=0
 for Bytes in $(ls -l | grep "^-" | cut -c30-41)
 do
 let TotalBytes=$TotalBytes+$Bytes
 done
 TotalMeg=$(echo -e "scale=3 \nx=$TotalBytes/1048576\n if (x<1) {print \"0\"} \n print x \nquit" | bc)

# This is used to calculate the differential in load values
 # provided by the "uptime" command. "uptime" gives load
 # averages at 1, 5, and 15 minute marks.
 #
 local one=$(uptime | sed -e "s/.*load average: \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\)/\1/" -e "s/ //g")
 local five=$(uptime | sed -e "s/.*load average: \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\), \(.*\...\).*/\2/" -e "s/ //g")
 local diff1_5=$(echo -e "scale = scale ($one) \nx=$one - $five\n if (x>0) {print \"up\"} else {print \"down\"}\n print x \nquit \n" | bc)
 loaddiff="$(echo -n "${one}${diff1_5}")"

# Count visible files:
 let files=$(ls -l | grep "^-" | wc -l | tr -d " ")
 let hiddenfiles=$(ls -l -d .* | grep "^-" | wc -l | tr -d " ")
 let executables=$(ls -l | grep ^-..x | wc -l | tr -d " ")
 let directories=$(ls -l | grep "^d" | wc -l | tr -d " ")
 let hiddendirectories=$(ls -l -d .* | grep "^d" | wc -l | tr -d " ")-2
 let linktemp=$(ls -l | grep "^l" | wc -l | tr -d " ")
 if [ "$linktemp" -eq "0" ]
 then
 links=""
 else
 links=" ${linktemp}l"
 fi
 unset linktemp
 let devicetemp=$(ls -l | grep "^[bc]" | wc -l | tr -d " ")
 if [ "$devicetemp" -eq "0" ]
 then
 devices=""
 else
 devices=" ${devicetemp}bc"
 fi
 unset devicetemp

}

PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

function pprom2 {

local BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
 local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
 local LIGHT_GREEN="\[\033[1;32m\]"
 local LIGHT_BLUE="\[\033[1;34m\]"
 local LIGHT_CYAN="\[\033[1;36m\]"
 local YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"
 local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
 local RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
 local NO_COLOUR="\[\033[0m\]"

case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 TITLEBAR=""
 ;;
 esac

PS1="$TITLEBAR\
 $BLUE[$RED\$(date +%H%M)$BLUE]\
 $BLUE[$RED\u@\h$BLUE]\
 $BLUE[\
 $LIGHT_GRAY\${files}.\${hiddenfiles}-\
 $LIGHT_GREEN\${executables}x \
 $LIGHT_GRAY(\${TotalMeg}Mb) \
 $LIGHT_BLUE\${directories}.\
 \${hiddendirectories}d\
 $LIGHT_CYAN\${links}\
 $YELLOW\${devices}\
 $BLUE]\
 $BLUE[${WHITE}\${loaddiff}$BLUE]\
 $BLUE[\
 $WHITE\$(ps ax | wc -l | sed -e \"s: ::g\")proc\
 $BLUE]\
 \n\
 $BLUE[$RED\$PWD$BLUE]\
 $WHITE\$\
 \
 $NO_COLOUR "
 PS2='> '
 PS4='+ '
 }
 ______________________________________________________________________

12.5. Prompt Depending on Connection Type

Bradley M Alexander ([email protected]) had the excellent idea of
 reminding his users what kind of connection they were using to his
 machine(s), so he colour-codes prompts dependent on connection type.
 Here's the bashrc he supplied to me:

______________________________________________________________________

# /etc/bashrc

# System wide functions and aliases
 # Environment stuff goes in /etc/profile

# For some unknown reason bash refuses to inherit
 # PS1 in some circumstances that I can't figure out.
 # Putting PS1 here ensures that it gets loaded every time.

# Set up prompts. Color code them for logins. Red for root, white for
 # user logins, green for ssh sessions, cyan for telnet,
 # magenta with red "(ssh)" for ssh + su, magenta for telnet.
 THIS_TTY=tty`ps aux | grep $$ | grep bash | awk '{ print $7 }'`
 SESS_SRC=`who | grep $THIS_TTY | awk '{ print $6 }'`

SSH_FLAG=0
 SSH_IP=`echo $SSH_CLIENT | awk '{ print $1 }'`
 if [ $SSH_IP ] ; then
 SSH_FLAG=1
 fi
 SSH2_IP=`echo $SSH2_CLIENT | awk '{ print $1 }'`
 if [ $SSH2_IP ] ; then
 SSH_FLAG=1
 fi
 if [ $SSH_FLAG -eq 1 ] ; then
 CONN=ssh
 elif [ -z $SESS_SRC ] ; then
 CONN=lcl
 elif [ $SESS_SRC = "(:0.0)" -o $SESS_SRC = "" ] ; then
 CONN=lcl
 else
 CONN=tel
 fi

# Okay...Now who we be?
 if [ `/usr/bin/whoami` = "root" ] ; then
 USR=priv
 else
 USR=nopriv
 fi

#Set some prompts...
 if [ $CONN = lcl -a $USR = nopriv ] ; then
 PS1="[\u \W]\\$ "
 elif [ $CONN = lcl -a $USR = priv ] ; then
 PS1="\[\033[01;31m\][\w]\\$\[\033[00m\] "
 elif [ $CONN = tel -a $USR = nopriv ] ; then
 PS1="\[\033[01;34m\][\u@\h \W]\\$\[\033[00m\] "
 elif [ $CONN = tel -a $USR = priv ] ; then
 PS1="\[\033[01;30;45m\][\u@\h \W]\\$\[\033[00m\] "
 elif [ $CONN = ssh -a $USR = nopriv ] ; then
 PS1="\[\033[01;32m\][\u@\h \W]\\$\[\033[00m\] "
 elif [ $CONN = ssh -a $USR = priv ] ; then
 PS1="\[\033[01;35m\][\u@\h \W]\\$\[\033[00m\] "
 fi

# PS1="[\u@\h \W]\\$ "
 export PS1
 alias which="type -path"
 alias dir="ls -lF --color"
 alias dirs="ls -lFS --color"
 alias h=history
 ______________________________________________________________________

12.6. A Prompt the Width of Your Term

A friend complained that he didn't like having a prompt that kept
 changing size because it had $PWD in it, so I wrote this prompt that
 adjusts its size to exactly the width of your term, with the working
 directory on the top line of two.

______________________________________________________________________

#!/bin/bash

# termwide prompt
 # by Giles - created 2 November 98
 #
 # The idea here is to have the upper line of this two line prompt
 # always be the width of your term. Do this by calculating the
 # width of the text elements, and putting in fill as appropriate
 # or left-truncating $PWD.
 #

function prompt_command {

TERMWIDTH=${COLUMNS}

# Calculate the width of the prompt:

hostnam=$(echo -n $HOSTNAME | sed -e "s/[\.].*//")
 # "whoami" and "pwd" include a trailing newline
 usernam=$(whoami)
 let usersize=$(echo -n $usernam | wc -c | tr -d " ")
 newPWD="${PWD}"
 let pwdsize=$(echo -n ${newPWD} | wc -c | tr -d " ")
 # Add all the accessories below ...
 let promptsize=$(echo -n "--(${usernam}@${hostnam})---(${PWD})--" \
 | wc -c | tr -d " ")
 let fillsize=${TERMWIDTH}-${promptsize}
 fill=""
 while [ "$fillsize" -gt "0" ]
 do
 fill="${fill}-"
 let fillsize=${fillsize}-1
 done

if [ "$fillsize" -lt "0" ]
 then
 let cut=3-${fillsize}
 newPWD="...$(echo -n $PWD | sed -e "s/\(^.\{$cut\}\)\(.*\)/\2/")"
 fi
 }

PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

function termwide {

local GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
 local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
 local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
 local NO_COLOUR="\[\033[0m\]"

local LIGHT_BLUE="\[\033[1;34m\]"
 local YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"

case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 TITLEBAR=""
 ;;
 esac

PS1="$TITLEBAR\
 $YELLOW-$LIGHT_BLUE-(\
 $YELLOW\${usernam}$LIGHT_BLUE@$YELLOW\${hostnam}\
 ${LIGHT_BLUE})-${YELLOW}-\${fill}${LIGHT_BLUE}-(\
 $YELLOW\${newPWD}\
 $LIGHT_BLUE)-$YELLOW-\
 \n\
 $YELLOW-$LIGHT_BLUE-(\
 $YELLOW\$(date +%H%M)$LIGHT_BLUE:$YELLOW\$(date \"+%a,%d %b %y\")\
 $LIGHT_BLUE:$WHITE\$$LIGHT_BLUE)-\
 $YELLOW-\
 $NO_COLOUR "

PS2="$LIGHT_BLUE-$YELLOW-$YELLOW-$NO_COLOUR "

}
 ______________________________________________________________________

12.7. The Elegant Useless Clock Prompt

This is one of the more attractive (and useless) prompts I've made.
 Because many X terminal emulators don't implement cursor position save
 and restore, the alternative when putting a clock in the upper right
 corner is to anchor the cursor at the bottom of the terminal. This
 builds on the idea of the "termwide" prompt above, drawing a line up
 the right side of the screen from the prompt to the clock. A VGA font
 is required.

Note: There is an odd substitution in here, that may not print
 properly being translated from SGML to other formats: I had to
 substitute the screen character for \304 - I would normally have just
 included the sequence "\304", but it was necessary to make this
 substitution in this case.

______________________________________________________________________

#!/bin/bash

# This prompt requires a VGA font. The prompt is anchored at the bottom
 # of the terminal, fills the width of the terminal, and draws a line up
 # the right side of the terminal to attach itself to a clock in the upper
 # right corner of the terminal.

function prompt_command {
 # Calculate the width of the prompt:
 hostnam=$(echo -n $HOSTNAME | sed -e "s/[\.].*//")
 # "whoami" and "pwd" include a trailing newline
 usernam=$(whoami)
 newPWD="${PWD}"
 # Add all the accessories below ...
 let promptsize=$(echo -n "--(${usernam}@${hostnam})---(${PWD})-----" \
 | wc -c | tr -d " ")
 # Figure out how much to add between user@host and PWD (or how much to
 # remove from PWD)
 let fillsize=${COLUMNS}-${promptsize}
 fill=""
 # Make the filler if prompt isn't as wide as the terminal:
 while [ "$fillsize" -gt "0" ]
 do
 fill="${fill}"
 # The A with the umlaut over it (it will appear as a long dash if
 # you're using a VGA font) is \304, but I cut and pasted it in
 # because Bash will only do one substitution - which in this case is
 # putting $fill in the prompt.
 let fillsize=${fillsize}-1
 done
 # Right-truncate PWD if the prompt is going to be wider than the terminal:
 if [ "$fillsize" -lt "0" ]
 then
 let cutt=3-${fillsize}
 newPWD="...$(echo -n $PWD | sed -e "s/\(^.\{$cutt\}\)\(.*\)/\2/")"
 fi
 #
 # Create the clock and the bar that runs up the right side of the term
 #
 local LIGHT_BLUE="\033[1;34m"
 local YELLOW="\033[1;33m"
 # Position the cursor to print the clock:
 echo -en "\033[2;$((${COLUMNS}-9))H"
 echo -en "$LIGHT_BLUE($YELLOW$(date +%H%M)$LIGHT_BLUE)\304$YELLOW\304\304\277"
 local i=${LINES}
 echo -en "\033[2;${COLUMNS}H"
 # Print vertical dashes down the side of the terminal:
 while [ $i -ge 4 ]
 do
 echo -en "\033[$(($i-1));${COLUMNS}H\263"
 let i=$i-1
 done

let prompt_line=${LINES}-1
 # This is needed because doing \${LINES} inside a Bash mathematical
 # expression (ie. $(())) doesn't seem to work.
 }

PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

function clock3 {
 local LIGHT_BLUE="\[\033[1;34m\]"
 local YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"
 local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
 local LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
 local NO_COLOUR="\[\033[0m\]"

case $TERM in
 xterm*)
 TITLEBAR='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'
 ;;
 *)
 TITLEBAR=""
 ;;
 esac

PS1="$TITLEBAR\
 \[\033[\${prompt_line};0H\]
 $YELLOW\332$LIGHT_BLUE\304(\
 $YELLOW\${usernam}$LIGHT_BLUE@$YELLOW\${hostnam}\
 ${LIGHT_BLUE})\304${YELLOW}\304\${fill}${LIGHT_BLUE}\304(\
 $YELLOW\${newPWD}\
 $LIGHT_BLUE)\304$YELLOW\304\304\304\331\
 \n\
 $YELLOW\300$LIGHT_BLUE\304(\
 $YELLOW\$(date \"+%a,%d %b %y\")\
 $LIGHT_BLUE:$WHITE\$$LIGHT_BLUE)\304\
 $YELLOW\304\
 $LIGHT_GRAY "

PS2="$LIGHT_BLUE\304$YELLOW\304$YELLOW\304$NO_COLOUR "

}
 ______________________________________________________________________