Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!necntc!ima!minya!jc From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: PS1 and the bourne shell... Message-ID: <423@minya.UUCP> Date: Thu, 3-Dec-87 20:24:51 EST Article-I.D.: minya.423 Posted: Thu Dec 3 20:24:51 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 8-Dec-87 05:18:06 EST References: <279@caus-dp.UUCP> <6704@brl-smoke.ARPA> <9443@tekecs.TEK.COM> Organization: home Lines: 30 Summary: Well, there is a way... Xref: mnetor comp.unix.questions:5189 comp.unix.wizards:5797 After reading all the flames about the difficulty of getting a prompt from the Bourne shell showing the current directory, I decided to see if it was possible. It took about 5 minutes to determine that, yes, it is possible, but you just might not like the solution. Here's a script that I put into a convenient public directory under the name "d": cd $d;PS1="$d: " How do you use this little sucker? Like this: d=/foo/bar . d which puts you in /foo/bar and gets you the prompt: /foo/bar: If you want to get back to your home directory, you might type: d= . d and you get just a ":" prompt. Lovely, isn't it? (;-) Now I know that y'all would much prefer a sane syntax like that of "cd". Well, you're just plumb out of luck, I guess. I haven't thought it out yet, but I believe I can make a good argument that, with the generic Bourne shell (i.e., no aliases or functions), you can't implement the right syntax for this operation. If someone out there can come up with a solution, I'd like to see it. Feel free to use my weird script if you wish; I won't consider it to be plagiarism if a good solution is built on mine. [This is almost as much fun as real mathematics! :-] -- John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard,mit-eddie}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)