On Mon, 6 Apr 1998, Santiago Vila Doncel wrote: > Well, this is what I use it for myself. I use PS1='\h:\w\$ ' for an > ordinary user and PS1='[EMAIL PROTECTED]:\w\$ ' for root. Rationale: I'm root > only > in my machine (as most Debian users, I think) and therefore when I'm > "sanvila" I am not usually interested in the username. > > However, I'm willing to set default root's prompt in base-files to > '\h:\w\$ ' if enough people prefer it to '[EMAIL PROTECTED]:\w\$ '.
i prefer '[EMAIL PROTECTED] \w\$ '. username in the prompt is very useful. root has to su to several different uids in order to do certain types of maint....e.g. su postgres, su uucp, su news. working directory in the prompt is essential. how else can you keep track of where each one of dozens of different shells are? hostname is vital. anyone working on more than one machine knows this. FWIW, i don't care too much what's in the default anyway. I always copy in ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, and my own ~/.bash-aliases (which is sourced by .bashrc) onto every new machine i build. i also edit /etc/profile to what i want it to be....PATH, MANOPT, EDITOR, LESSPIPE and others. whatever the debian default is, it's NOT going to be what i need because what i need probably isn't what other people need, and vice-versa. btw, a couple of useful aliases: alias savealias='alias >~/.bash-aliases' alias loadalias='. ~/.bash-aliases' i create aliases interactively at the shell prompt and run savealias whenever i have a good new one i want to keep. loadalias is only there so i can easily load newly created aliases into already running bash xterms. craig -- craig sanders -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]