gwr@linus.UUCP (Gordon W. Ross) (07/06/88)
Posting-number: Volume 3, Issue 72
Submitted-by: "Gordon W. Ross" <gwr@linus.UUCP>
Archive-name: quickprompt
For users who like a prompt showing the current working directory,
here is a csh prompt generator with two important advantages:
(1) It never loads a program to create a new prompt, and
(2) it shortens the current working directory if its beginning
matches the $HOME directory.
The reason I avoid loading a program (like expr or awk) is that doing
so can produce unacceptable delays after a cd, pushd, or popd.
Shortening the prompt allows long commands to still fit on an 80
column terminal.
Shortening is performed by a little-know capability of the csh "dirs"
command. The "dirs" command prints out the directory stack using full
path-names and, if appropriate, names starting with "~/" are shown.
This should help in understanding the following csh aliases:
# Set prompt generating aliases...
# Note: this prompt generator uses only C-shell built-in commands.
# Loading programs to build a prompt gives unacceptably slow results.
set host = `hostname` # (done only once)
# one backslash is used when this file is sourced;
# another is used when the alias is interpreted.
alias prompt 'set noglob ;\\
set prompt = `dirs` ;\\
set prompt = "${host}.${user}:${prompt[1]}> " ;\\
unset noglob'
alias popd 'popd \!* ; prompt'
alias pushd 'pushd \!* ; prompt'
alias cd 'cd \!* ; prompt'
prompt # make it appear as the first prompt
# That's all, folks. Have fun!
--
Gordon W. Ross MITRE (E025), Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730
linus!gwr@mitre-bedford.arpa {decvax,philabs}!linus!gwr.UUCP