In your home directory, add this line:
export PS1=”\d, \t\n \w \$ ”
to your .bash_profile settings file. This will have your command prompt appear with the current date, current time, a line break, and then the complete path to the directory you are in. The variables you can use include:
- \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
I know this may not be very useful to a lot of people, but I wanted to make a note of this for the future. Happy New Year!