Re: base-files 1.6 (source all) uploaded to master

[Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@worldvisions.ca>]

On Tue, Apr 07, 1998 at 07:18:33AM -0400, Gregory S. Stark wrote:

> > Anyway, I remember a Slackware trick to set the default prompt for many
> > different shells. Could not we do the same?
> 
> Am I the only one who thinks the only correct prompts would be '$ ' and '#
> '?

I hope so.  I know prompts are a religious issue, but they should at least
tell you _something_.  $ vs # tells you whether you're the superuser or not,
but that's pretty dull.  bash$ just provides useless information -- 99% of
the time, I'm in bash; otherwise I'm in tcsh, which uses a % anyway.  (I use
Solaris at work and Linux at home.)

I can live with having a hostname in the prompt, but I prefer to
colour-code my hosts instead :)  I know this one is definitely personal
preference.

I usually find that having my username in the prompt is pretty useless,
given that I'm almost always either me or root, and I can use $/# to
determine which.  People with a lot of sub-accounts would like to have the
username in their prompt, but I think this is uncommon (?).

Having my path in the prompt is absolutely essential.  I have a tendency
to open tonnes of shell windows and forget where I am in each one --
displaying it in the prompt is a great help.

I also like to have a newline (\n) as the first character of my prompt. 
This prevents it popping up at the end of an existing line, and does a good
job of separating each command on the screen so I don't lose my bearings.

If TERM==xterm or rxvt, I add a code that places the current hostname and
directory in the window title -- that way I can remember which of my many
minimized rxvt's I'm looking for.  I tend to log into many computers
simultaneously in the course of my work, so having the hostname/directory
show up automatically in the icon is a great help.

Maybe we should have a vote on popular prompt features, then try to
implement them on a shell-by-shell basis :)  For reference, mine looks like
this:

	[newline]
	/usr/local/bin $
	    ^^^        ^
	     |         |
	  Yellow     Bold yellow
	  
In my frame of reference, "yellow" means my laptop.  I have a handy login
script that chooses a colour based on hostname.

I think we should stay away from colours and xterm codes in the default
prompt, but just bash$ and # are pretty useless.

IMHO :)

Avery


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