How can I make my terminal's command prompt shorter to increase line realestate?

Question

I would like to make my terminal's command prompt shorter. Currently I am using Python 's virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper so that is causing lots of extra text to be displayed in my command prompt. I need to shorten that up to the bare minimum so I'd like to take this:

(pytutorial)sez@sez-laptop:~/.virtualenvs/nettuts/firstblog$

and ideally turn it into

(pyt)sez:~/.virtualenvs/nettuts/firstblog$

or maybe something shorter perhaps. Right now I am using Gnome Terminal 2 & bash.

Any suggestions?

Solution 1

Your prompt can be set utilizing the PS1 envvar. For example to have a minimalist command prompt of '$" simply set PS1='$' in your .bashrc. Here are some good examples of setting a customized prompt

Solution 2

I guess \u:\w\$ is what you need, where \u is your username and \w is the current working directory (\W is shorter). Modify your ~/.bashrc to change the prompt.

Solution 3

Edit your .bashrc and change the PS1 definition. See your own /etc/bashrc for an example, or see bash documentation.

Solution 4

We use a consistent header across all our machines, that has the full current working directory on the line (along with hostname and user), then a line break with just the current directory name and the prompt itself.

That way, you still get plenty of width and there is a clear distinction between different lines.

Its also coloured :)

export PS1="\e[0;35m[\u@\e[0;33s\h\e[0;35m \w] \e[m \n[\W]\$ "

Eg. Which would output

[myuser@myserver /home/myuser]
[myuser]$ 

Save the line in your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile or /etc/profile to make it persistent.

Solution 5

Simply type in your terminal nano .bash_profile. Copy:

export PS1="\u@\h\w: "

Save.

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