bash Cookbook

Prompt String Customizations

Table A-2 shows a summary of the prompt customizations that are available. The customizations \[ and \] are not available in bash versions prior to 1.14. \a, \e, \H, \T, \@, \v, and \V are not available in versions prior to 2.0. \A, \D, \j, \l, and \r are only available in later versions of bash 2.0 and in bash 3.0.

Table A-2. Prompt string format codes

Command	Meaning	Added
\a	The ASCII bell character (007).	bash-1.14.7
\A	The current time in 24-hour HH:MM format.	bash-2.05
\d	The date in “Weekday Month Day” format.
\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.	bash-2.05b
\e	The ASCII escape character (033).	bash-1.14.7
\H	The hostname.	bash-1.14.7
\h	The hostname up to the first “.”.
\j	The number of jobs currently managed by the shell.	bash-2.03
\l	The basename of the shell’s terminal device name.	bash-2.03
\n	A carriage return and line feed.
\r	A carriage return.	bash-2.01.1
\s	The name of the shell.
\T	The current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format.	bash-1.14.7
\t	The current time in HH:MM:SS format.
\@	The current time in 12-hour a.m./p.m. format.	bash-1.14.7
\u	The username of the current user.
\v	The version of bash (e.g., 2.00).	bash-1.14.7
\V	The release of bash; the version and patchlevel (e.g., 3.00.0).	bash-1.14.7
\w	The current working directory.
\W	The basename of the current working directory.
\#	The command number ...