7.2.4.1. Introduction

The Bash prompt can do much more than displaying such simple information as your user name, the name of your machine and some indication about the present working directory. We can add other information such as the current date and time, number of connected users etc.

Before we begin, however, we will save our current prompt in another environment variable:

[jerry@nowhere jerry]$ MYPROMPT=$PS1

[jerry@nowhere jerry]$ echo $MYPROMPT
[\u@\h \W]\$

[jerry@nowhere jerry]$

When we change the prompt now, for example by issuing the command PS1="->", we can always get our original prompt back with the command PS1=$MYPROMPT. You will, of course, also get it back when you reconnect, as long as you just fiddle with the prompt on the command line and avoid putting it in a shell configuration file.