[SOLVED] FreeBSD 5.4 $PROMPT_COMMAND

Hey everyone.

I'm an advanced Linux user, but relatively new to FreeBSD.

Running:
* FreeBSD 5.4-STABLE
* Shell: /bin/bash

So by default, my shell prompt looked like:

Quote:

---

bash-2.05b$

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This isn't very useful, so I wanted it to behave how I'm used to it ... showing something like

Quote:

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username@hostname: current_dir$

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To do this, I'm using something similar to Ubuntu (and recommended by a few websites -- e.g. http://kinzlaw.wordpress.com/2007/08...mpt_command/):
So in my .bashrc:

Code:

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export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}\007"'.

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Unfortunately though, (for reasons unknown to me), the FreeBSD doesn't know what those ANSI escape character codes mean ... so I removed it and made a simpler statement of:

Code:

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export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -n "${USER}@`hostname -s`:  ${PWD/#$HOME/~}"'

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This is REALLY CLOSE. The functionality is there. Here's what it looks like:

Quote:

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username@hostname_short: CWDbash-2.05b$

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However, for some reason (again, unknown to me), the bash prompt is ALWAYS appended with the bash version number:

Quote:

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bash-2.05b

---

.

I've looked at .bash_profile, .profile, etc. I can't find anywhere where it might "append" something to the existing value of PROMPT_COMMAND...

Any tips on how to fix this?

from "man bash"

"PROMPT_COMMAND

If set, the value is executed as a command prior to issuing each
primary prompt.

PS1 The value of this parameter is expanded (see PROMPTING below) and
used as the primary prompt string.
The default value is ‘‘\s-\v\"

where /s is name of shell, and /v version i.e. "bash-2.05b"

so you are not changing PS1 from the default, just
prepending to it. Why not set PS1 directly: I use

PS1=\h/\u\w \033[1;42m\$\033[0m

for example--in .bash_profile

Ha!

Thanks, you're so right. I'm not really sure how/why ubuntu uses both PS1 and PROMPT_COMMAND:
* PROMPT_COMMAND = echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"
* PS1 = ${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$

But, on FreeBSD, setting the PS1 environment variable directly worked like magic.

Thanks!