How to You Configure The Command Prompt in Linux to Show Current Directory

How to you configure the command prompt in Linux to show current directory?

You can place this to your .zshrc file

export PS1="%d %% "

%d denotes the CWD

For more details go here for example

How to show/hide current working directory in bash prompt?

You should look up Bash prompt special characters.

As you can see in the list, the current working directory is \w, and \a is the bell character, so just remove those.

How can I shortern my command line prompt's current directory?

Consider this script using awk instead of sed for your case:

pwd_length=14
pwd_symbol="..."
newPWD="${PWD/#$HOME/~}"
if [ $(echo -n $newPWD | wc -c | tr -d " ") -gt $pwd_length ]
then
   newPWD=$(echo -n $newPWD | awk -F '/' '{
   print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $(NF-1) "/" $(NF)}')
fi
PS1='${newPWD}$ '

For your example of directory ~/workspace/projects/project1/folder1/test it makes PS1 as: ~/workspace/.../folder1/test

UPDATE

Above solution will set your prompt but as you noted in your comment that it will NOT change PS1 dynamically when you change directory. So here is the solution that will dynamically set PS1 when you change directories around.

Put these 2 lines in your .bashrc file:

export MYPS='$(echo -n "${PWD/#$HOME/~}" | awk -F "/" '"'"'{
if (length($0) > 14) { if (NF>4) print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $(NF-1) "/" $NF;
else if (NF>3) print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $NF;
else print $1 "/.../" $NF; }
else print $0;}'"'"')'
PS1='$(eval "echo ${MYPS}")$ '

if (NF > 4 && length($0) > 14) condition in awk will only apply special handling when your current directory is more than 3 directories deep AND if length of $PWD is more than 14 characters otherwise and it will keep PS1 as $PWD.

eg: if current directory is ~/workspace/projects/project1$ then PS1 will be ~/workspace/projects/project1$

Effect of above in .bashrc will be as follows on your PS1:

~$ cd ~/workspace/projects/project1/folder1/test
~/workspace/.../folder1/test$ cd ..
~/workspace/.../project1/folder1$ cd ..
~/workspace/.../project1$ cd ..
~/.../projects$ cd ..
~/workspace$ cd ..
~$

Notice how prompt is changing when I change directories. Let me know if this is not what you wanted.

Linux prompt with current path displayed

A shell variable known as PS1 is responsible for displaying the default command prompt in bash. To see your current setup try echo "$PS1". You can set PS1 in your .bashrc file for a custom prompt. It sounds like you want something like this:

PS1="\H:\w$ "

Explanation:

\H - The hostname of the machine

\w - The working directory, relative to $HOME (or ~)

You can try different combinations if you want something even more customized. For a reference, check out this blog: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-linux-unix-bash-shell-setup-prompt.html

Display the current directory name in bash terminal window

Since $PWD is guaranteed to be a directory, you might use either of the following:

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$$ ${BRANCH} $(basename "$PWD") \007"'
PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$$ ${BRANCH} ${PWD##*/} \007"'

How do I show the real current directory in my bash prompt, not the symlink

Use $(pwd -P) instead of \w . Like this:

PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]$(pwd -P)\[\033[00m\]$ '

How to custom display prompt in KornShell to show hostname and current directory?

From reading the ksh man page you want

PS1="${HOSTNAME}:\${PWD##*/} \$ "

Tested on default ksh on SunOS 5.8

How do I run a program with a different working directory from current, from Linux shell?

Call the program like this:

(cd /c; /a/helloworld)

The parentheses cause a sub-shell to be spawned. This sub-shell then changes its working directory to /c, then executes helloworld from /a. After the program exits, the sub-shell terminates, returning you to your prompt of the parent shell, in the directory you started from.

Error handling: To avoid running the program without having changed the directory, e.g. when having misspelled /c, make the execution of helloworld conditional:

(cd /c && /a/helloworld)

Reducing memory usage: To avoid having the subshell waste memory while hello world executes, call helloworld via exec:

(cd /c && exec /a/helloworld)

[Thanks to Josh and Juliano for giving tips on improving this answer!]

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