Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!munnari!otc!metro!basser!elecvax!neilb From: neilb@elecvax.eecs.unsw.oz (Neil F. Brown) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: The whole prompt string thing (was: PS1 and the bourne shell...) Message-ID: <3855@elecvax.eecs.unsw.oz> Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 19:40:11 EST Article-I.D.: elecvax.3855 Posted: Fri Dec 4 19:40:11 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 12-Dec-87 12:38:44 EST References: <279@caus-dp.UUCP> <1311@puff.wisc.edu> Organization: EE and CS, Uni of NSW, Sydney, Australia Lines: 34 Summary: Yes, there IS an answer (but I dont think you're going to like it) I, too, once believed that you couldn't do clever things in a pre SysV shell like change the prompt when you changed directory. Then someone told me you could. I thought about it and realised he was right. Its slow, its not real nice, but it does work. For instance: in your .profile put the lines PARENT=$$ export PARENT trap 'DIR=`cat $HOME/.dir` ; cd $DIR ; PS1="$DIR :- "' 6 then in a directory somewhere in your path but the file ch: cd $1 pwd > $HOME/.dir kill -6 $PARENT and make it execuatable Now to change directory, type ch newdir And your prompt will change along with your directory. You can even use this approach to create and manipulate directory stacks, though I'll leave the details of that to the interested reader. Ofcourse a better solution it to get a newer shell, though thats easier said than done. Hopefully one will appear in a sources news group somtime. NeilBrown