Mac OS Lion Terminal: Add blank line after command output?

Question

How can I configure my .bash_profile to add a blank line after any command output?

Solution 1

You want to adjust the shell prompt; the default shell is bash, and it will happily inject a newline into the prompt by embedding \n in the appropriate variables. (PS1 by default.)

More details at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-tip-prompt/ or in the manual page - though that is a much more pleasant reference.

Solution 2

Add the following line at the end of ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc, whichever exists:

PS1="\n$PS1"

This will add a newline before a prompt is printed, which is after control is returned to the shell.

Unless your command prompt contains shell commands or variables (which would get executed/interpreted at the time of variable assignment), this will work. Otherwise, just prepend the \n to your original prompt definition.

Comments

[humanfly]

My shell is bash and below is what I currently have: export PS1="\u:\w - " With above if I add "\n" at the end then the new line gets added immediately after the second line hyphen "-" and not after command output. I am looking for something that would add new line after command execution.

[Daniel Pittman]

Try putting the newline at the start of your prompt. :)

[Marcus Böhm]

In more recent version of OS X this file was renamed to: ~/.profile

[HikeMike]

@MarcusBöhm: Completely different file, see e.g. man bash, section INVOCATION. However, if you've never changes anything, the files I mention may not exist.