Re: OT: Exporting a BASH prompt from a script

[Shreyas Ananthan <shreyas@stallion.umd.edu>]

Hal Vaughan <hal@thresholddigital.com> writes:

> I'm having a strange problem.  I've installed some new systems and I can
> change the prompt as I want, but if I write any kind of script, and change
> the prompt within the script, it doesn't change the prompt.  This is even
> with a short 1 line script that does nothing but change the prompt.
> 
> Here's the prompt I'm trying to use (which includes escape characters, which 
> seem to be causing the problem -- bash seems to see them as commands):
> 
> PS1="\e[35;40m[\u@\h:\W]\\$\e[0m "
> 
> I know my old .bashrc changed the prompt (only PS1), but I don't remember
> doing anything other than PS1="{my prompt}" to get it to do that.  Now it
> won't work.  I tried to export PS1 so it would be available outside the
> script, but export didn't like some of the characters in it.
> 
> So how can I export a prompt I create in a script (like .bashrc) to use
> outside the script (in normal command line)?

When you run a script, it runs inside a new shell which is terminated
when the script is completed. If you want the commands in the script
to affect the current shell you want to do 

debian$ source ./<script name> 

instead of 

debian$ ./<script name>

Hope that helps.