2 responses to “My Terminal Prompt”

1. It’s sensible. I use a 2-line prompt. The line above shows a little status and the working directory. The line below is where I type commands. The left hand margin where I begin to type never changes. This is also helpful when turning captures of interactive sessions into documentation or scripts. Having the left margin jump left and right every time you change directories is stupid.

   1422699671 ?=0 noahspurrier@crossbow:/home/noahspurrier
   $ vim .bashrc

   The 10 digit number is the epoch date/time stamp. It’s more compact than a full date. I hardly ever care about the calendar date or clock time and Epoch times are easier to add and subtract. The first rule of logging is to timestamp everything.

   The “?=0” is the exit code from the previous command. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t at least include something like this. I used it all the time.

   The remaining part of the top line is the username, hostname, and path formatted so that it could be cut and pasted into an SSH, SCP, rsync command.

   • I really like showing the previous exit code.

     Do you need to compare timestamp values for forensic purposes?