[olug] Unix Tip: WHERE AM I ALWAYS

[Brian Wiese]

In bash (bourne again shell) I often times find myself deep in some
directory path, usually looking at my class homework, or some web
directory and such... for example:

bwiese at franklin:/mnt/lib-data/backups/freedom-laptop/CLASSES/CURR/forensi
cs/homework/assign1$

yeah, we can all agree that's ugly, but at times I like my bash prompt to
tell me exactly where I am at - in case there are more than one directory
with the same name on the system.  I check out my current shell prompt
config like so... echo $PS1

bwiese at franklin:/mnt/lib-data/backups/freedom-laptop/CLASSES/CURR/forensi
cs/homework/assign1$ echo $PS1\u@\h:\w\$

To see what can be done about this, I did a 'man bash' and the pertinent
information is under the "PROMPTING" section, just do a "/PROMPTING" to
get there, hit "n" (for next) twice.  The "W" gives the current directory
while "w" gives the current path.

So I change my prompt like so... PS1="\u@\h:\W\$ "  (leave a space after
the $ with your quotes so it looks nice when you type)

bwiese at franklin:/mnt/lib-data/backups/freedom-laptop/CLASSES/CURR/forensi
cs/homework/assign1$ PS1="\u@\h:\W\$ " bwiese at franklin:assign1$ pwd
/mnt/lib-data/backups/freedom-laptop/CLASSES/CURR/forensics/homework/assi
gn1

And hey, thats what the "pwd" command is for when you need it!  If you
prefer this prompt style, edit your ~/.bashrc to set it as so for every
time you start a bash session....
or to simply cut down on the path length, create a symbolic link to the
prefered directory. (I usually tend to get the target/link arguments
switched up... but it should be of the form 'where you want to go' and
'how you want to get there')

ln -s <target dir> <link location>

$ ln -s
/mnt/lib-data/backups/freedom-laptop/CLASSES/CURR/forensics/homework/assi
gn1 ~/assign1


On Thu, 13 Mar 2003 11:25:17 -0800
Unix Guru Universe <listserv at ugu.com> wrote:

|
|=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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|			      UNIX GURU UNIVERSE 
|			         UNIX HOT TIP
|
|			Unix Tip 1898 - March 13, 2003
|
|		    http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?tip.today
|
|=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
|WHERE AM I ALWAYS
|
|In csh, if you always want to know 
|where you are, put in your .cshrc-file 
|the following 2 lines:
|
|alias sp 'set prompt="`hostname`:`pwd`> "'  
|alias cd 'cd \!*;sp'
|
|
|
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  Brian Wiese | bwiese at cotse.com | aim: unolinuxguru
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