Change PS1 prompt

To change PS1, you just have to change the value of PS1 shell variable. The value can be set in ~/.bashrc or /etc/bashrc file, depending on the distro. PS1 can be changed to any plain text like:

PS1="hello "

Besides the plain text, a number of backslash-escaped special characters are supported:

Format | Action |

|——|——————————| | \a | an ASCII bell character (07) | | \d | the date in “Weekday Month Date” format (e.g., “Tue May 26”) | | \D{format} | the format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation. The braces are required | | \e | an ASCII escape character (033) | | \h | the hostname up to the first ‘.’ | | \H | the hostname | | \j | the number of jobs currently managed by the shell | | \l | the basename of the shell’s terminal device name | | \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 | | \A | the current time in 24-hour HH:MM format | | \u | the username of the current user | | \v | the version of bash (e.g., 2.00) | | \V | the release of bash, version + patch level (e.g., 2.00.0) | | \w | the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde | | \W | the basename of the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde | | \! | 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 | | \[ | begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt | | \] | end a sequence of non-printing characters |

So for example, we can set PS1 to:

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

And it will output:

user@machine:~$