User Commands BASH(1)
to exit is made without an intervening command, the shell
does not print another warning, and the stopped jobs are
terminated.
PROMPTING
When executing interactively, bash displays the primary
prompt PS1 when it is ready to read a command, and the
secondary prompt PS2 when it needs more input to complete a
command. Bash allows these prompt strings to be customized
by inserting a number of backslash-escaped special charac-
ters that are decoded as follows:
\a an ASCII bell character (07)
\d the date in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g.,
"Tue May 26")
\e an ASCII escape character (033)
\h the hostname up to the first `.'
\H the hostname
\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
\u the username of the current user
\v the version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
\V the release of bash, version + patchlevel (e.g.,
2.00.0)
\w the current working directory
\W the basename of the current working directory
\! 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
The command number and the history number are usually dif-
ferent: the history number of a command is its position in
the history list, which may include commands restored from
the history file (see HISTORY below), while the command
number is the position in the sequence of commands executed
during the current shell session. After the string is
decoded, it is expanded via parameter expansion, command
substitution, arithmetic expansion, string expansion, and
quote removal, subject to the value of the promptvars shell
option (see the description of the shopt command under SHELL
BUILTIN COMMANDS below).
GNU Last change: 1999 Jan 20 43
Experiment with the above options and find the one that suits your needs. I suggest though that you include
the parameter