guido@mcvax.UUCP (Guido van Rossum) (10/18/84)
Hello everybody,
Please, please, please, don't send me any more funny prompts. I've already
got 34 kb of mail, and most of it ISN'T FUNNY!
I should have known that my own prompt was the funniest (it's :-) ).
Here's a summary of what I received.
Comments in [ square brackets ] are mine.
-------------------- Funny character combinations ---------------------
[ This is my favourite category. Alas, it seems the ASCII character
set is too small to allow more than a few funny combinations. ]
From: Rick Adams <seismo!rick>
I used to set my prompt to be "#". It really got people
excited in the days before I had the root password. They could
not understand how I could have "#" as a prompt and not have a
root shell.
[ Do you need a # prompt to feel superior over others? ]
---
From: ucbvax!fishkin (Ken Fishkin)
/\/\_<
(the < should be right over the underscore)
---
From: hcrvax!milan
I spent a few years working on a DEC-1090 system running TOPS10.
The prompt in that system is a period (.). I got very much
hooked on the machine, so that when I switched to working on
UNIX, I set my prompt to ".".
Very terse and satisfying.
---
From: rpf@ptsfa.UUCP
I kind'a like PS1="^^oo^^"
[ First prize in this category. I really like its lookings. ]
---
From: dre@ptsfa.UUCP (Doug East)
Being brought up on Cyber NOS before becoming a confirmed UNIX user, I
learned to like a slash prompt ('/'). Hence, I use the same prompt now.
It does seem to confuse a few people because of its similarity to path
names and the like but I haven't had any problems, yet. Additionally,
PS2 is set to '+'.
---
From: Paul Asente <csl-vax!asente>
At decwrl, the machines are named after various mythological entities.
On the machine saturn, my prompt was -O- (like the planet).
On pollux, I used "paulux:"
---
From: smu!leff (Laurence Leff)
I knew someone who used a set of characters plus backspaces that would like
a roach on a Decwriter.
----------------------------- Perverse --------------------------------
From: wivax!bazelman
How about the clear screen sequence (:-)).
---
From: rpf@ptsfa.UUCP
If you're really perverse try PS1="" or PS1="login:"
-------------------- "yesdear?" and funny sayings ---------------------
From: unm-cvax!cs4911ay (Mike Conley)
I've set up my .login file so that it prints "{*} Captain on the
bridge." upon logging on, then sets the prompt to "{!} Aye, Captain?".
(The !, of course, causes the number of the command to be printed.)
---
From: ucbvax!fishkin (Ken Fishkin)
beat me with whips and chains:
---
From: sdcc3!arwen (-=<sdcc3!arwen>=-)
Gosh, I've had a million prompts, from
Yes, master? :
to
Yes, silly nymphet? :
to
(currently)
Yes, my dear? :
... all proceeded by the command number, of course!
on my other account I have
Goddammit, I do NOT want to
which has gotten a little old, though it's fun for awhile!
---
From: ihuxo!engels
say what?
---
From: qantel!ken (Ken Nichols)
Now what?
This must be stated in an impatient tone, as if the machine is tired of you
asking it to do boring commands such as 'cat' and 'ls'.
P.S. I know someone else here whose prompt is:
Command me, O Great One:
Rather conceited I'd say.
---
From: petsd!joe (Joseph M. Orost)
Nyes?
Where "N" is the command number (for history).
---
From: bmcg!mikel (Mike Lesher)
How about 'By your command: '. This is for the Battlestar Galaticia fanatics.
---
From: qubix!lab (Q-Bick) (Larry Bickford)
Command, Sire?
one of the gals here has
YEAH, BOSS?
---
From: colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman)
Around here we see a lot of prompts like
Yes, Master?
May I help you?
NOW what??
Nobody pays much attention to them....
---
From: ssc-vax!alcmist (Frederick Wamsley)
A coworker of mine uses "HUH?" as a prompt.
---
From: ag5@pucc-i (Henry C. Mensch)
My favorite (seen on several student logins):
'Buzz off!'
---
From: tektronix!queenw
My prompt is:
"Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here!"
It's centered and in reverse video.
---
From: gordon@cae780.UUCP (Brian Gordon)
Or, under Apollo AUX, go for "Error core dumped:" ...
---------------------------- Csh wizardry -----------------------------
[ Personally I think the C shell isn't funny. Most of the contributions
weren't, either. Also, some of the enclosed scripts were to long to show
here, and should really go into the category "perverse". ]
From: gitpyr!robert (Robert Viduya)
[...]
Also, the prompt is not really "funny", just useful. The prompt basically
looks like this:
> x.yy /cwd
-
The cursor sits right above the '-'. 'x' is the current shell nesting level
(I've screwed myself too many times when I escape from an editor into the
shell and forget that the editor is still sitting out there). 'yy' is the
current history event number. '/cwd' is my current working directory. The
reason why the cursor sits on the 'x' is that, with a variable length
prompt (due to '/cwd'), I didn't want the start of my command line slowly
drifting off the right hand of the screen as I got really deep into the
file system. As it is, it looks strange when you type in your command,
but I'm used to it.
[ Second prize in this category. Would have been first prize without
explanation. ]
---
From: ucla-cs!cantrell (John Cantrell)
We use the Berkeley C shell here at UCLA and I wrote a little
program in C which grabs a prompt from a set of prompts loaded into
a file. The set of prompts which I have at this time is:
Holy cow\!
WOW\!
Now what?
Sie wuenschen?
Spam, SPam, SPAm, SPAM
This is the cursor->
The mace hits the bat -- More --
Pardon?
Say what?
Don't look now, but...
No Trespassing\!
login:
Huh?
Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum...
Why should I want to do that?
[ Couldn't you use a sed or awk script? Not a wizard, eh? ]
---
From: ucla-cs!rick (Richard Gillespie)
I have a program that reads prompts from a file when I login. I can also
change it on the fly (by running the program again). That way I can have
lots of prompts and can change them when I get tired of 'em. The prompts
get cycled so that they all get used (a friend selects them randomly).
Most of my prompts are Rocky and Bullwinkle, Get Smart, Monty Python,
and Hawaii Five-o sayings.
---
From: tektronix!larryk (Larry Kohn)
alias cd 'chdir \!* ; set prompt="\! ${cwd:t}: "'
---
From: sun!sunny (Sunny Kirsten)
[ Too long to reproduce. First prize in this category. Disgusting! It
basically set the prompt to something like host!user<prompt%command number>,
or several variations on this. ]
---
From: inmet!lutton (Mark Lutton)
If you use the C shell, ! in your prompt is changed to the
current command number. It saves using the "history" command.
My normal prompt is "lutton-!%". If I leave my terminal, others
can see it's me logged on.
Your prompt can cover more than one line. When I am in a subshell
my prompt says the following:
You are in a subshell.
There are ! little dwarves in the room with you.
Your terminal is glowing with a strange blue glow.
Once I tried making a prompt that filled the entire screen except
for the last character space on the last line. It was a gigantic
banner reading "DUH!" I never got it to work. There must be a
limit on the length of a prompt -- 256 maybe.
---
From: cuccia@ucbvax.ARPA (Nick Cuccia)
alias promp `set prompt=MachineName ($cwd) <\! > `
alias cd 'cd \!*; promp'
---
From: mff@wuphys.UUCP (Space Goat) (Mark F. Flynn)
Speaking of funny prompts, I have always wanted to write a shell script
which would change the prompt every so often, while I'm logged on. The
problem is that I can run a background process to change the shell variable
PROMPT (I'm running csh), but the parent process (the shell that I'm
talking to) doesn't know anything about that variable. Anyone have any
ideas?
[ Have you thought about hacking the C shell source? Must be easy. ]
------------------------ Anecdotes, remarks ---------------------------
From: seismo!princeton!down!north
clever prompts rival clever signature lines for boringness and
lack of good taste.
stephen c north
---
From: ken@rochester.UUCP (Ken Yap)
I once had a friend who set PS1 to an escape sequence that would draw a little
alien with a ray blaster and then fire the weapon by reverse videoing the line
twice!
---
From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Some of the grad students around here have the bad habit of forgetting to
log themselves out when they leave the terminal room. One of them once
returned to find that his prompt had been reset to:
CROSS MY HEART, I PROMISE THAT I WON'T LEAVE MYSELF LOGGED IN EVER AGAIN.>
... or something similar. It took him quite a while to figure out what
was going on.
---
From: wcs@ho95b.UUCP (59576) (Bill Stewart)
My office mate uses " " and works on an HP terminal. This way he can
use the ENTER key to resend a line (modified by local editing) and not
get complaints about "$: not found".
I work on three machines networked by DATAKIT. The default prompts are
set to 'A$ ', 'B$ ', & 'C$ '. I use "a: ". I used 'A> ' for a while, which
preserves a bit of continuity (my terminal is a PC), but I decided it
was ugly.
---
From: ajs@hpfcla.UUCP (Alan Silverstein)
This PS1 also works nicely:
PS1=":; "
It equates to "null command, end of command, next command".
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm short of breath after compiling this summary. Also, it's luch time.
Maybe next time we can start a C-shell contest? I won't be in it, though!
--
Guido van Rossum, "Stamp Out BASIC" Committee, CWI, Amsterdam
guido@mcvax.UUCP
"What was your mandoline doing in my bed?"