<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >What Can Tweaking Your Bash Prompt Do For You?</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Bash Prompt HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Bash and Bash Prompts" HREF="c141.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="What is Bash?" HREF="x143.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Why Bother?" HREF="x152.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Bash Prompt HOWTO: </TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x143.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 2. Bash and Bash Prompts</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="x152.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="AEN149" ></A >2.2. What Can Tweaking Your Bash Prompt Do For You?</H1 ><P >Most Linux systems have a default prompt in one colour (usually gray) that tells you your user name, the name of the machine you're working on, and some indication of your current working directory. This is all useful information, but you can do much more with the prompt: all sorts of information can be displayed (tty number, time, date, load, number of users, uptime ...) and the prompt can use ANSI colours, either to make it look interesting, or to make certain information stand out. You can also manipulate the title bar of an Xterm to reflect some of this information. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x143.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="x152.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >What is Bash?</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c141.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Why Bother?</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >