Customizing and Coloring the Bash Prompt Revision as of Wednesday, 26 June 2024 at 10:57 UTC

The Prompt Variable

user@ubuntu:~# echo $PS1 
${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\\[\033[01;32m\\]\u@\h\\[\033[00m\\]:\\[\033[01;34m\\]\w\\[\03300m\\]\$

Making Sense of the Above

Flags

Flag What it shows
\a ASCII bell character (07)
\d date in “Weekday Month Date” format (e.g., “Tue May 26”)
\e ASCII escape character (033)
\h hostname up to the first `.’
\H hostname
\n newline
\r return
\s name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion following the final slash)
\t current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
\T current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
\@ current time in 12-hour am/pm format
\u username of the current user
\v version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
\V release of bash, version + patchlevel (e.g., 2.00.0)
\w current working directory
\W basename of the current working direc-tory
\! history number of this command
\# command number of this command
\$ the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
\nnn character corresponding to the octal number nnn
\\ backslash
\[ a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal con-trol sequence into the prompt
\] a sequence of non-printing characters

Colors

Here’s a color table.

Color Code
Black 0;30
Dark Gray 1;30
Blue 0;34
Light Blue 1;34
Green 0;32
Light Green 1;32
Cyan 0;36
Light Cyan 1;36
Red 0;31
Light Red 1;31
Purple 0;35
Light Purple 1;35
Brown 0;33
Yellow 1;33
Light Gray 0;37
White 1;37

To color anything,

For example, to color the directory’s basename (\W) yellow (1;33),
you’d have this:

# Exploded to illustrate  
[33[01;33m\] \W \\[33[00m\\]  
  
# Together  
[33[01;33m\]\W\\[33[00m\\]