Improving your shell – GCC and command line colors

In this recipe, we are going learn how a user can improve the shell. We will do this using the PS1 bash environment variable.

Getting ready

Besides a terminal, you need basic knowledge of PS1.

 

How to do it...

The terminal appearance is taken by the PS1 shell variable. The content allowed in PS1 will contain backslash-escape special characters.

First, we will see what PS1's current contents in the system. For that, run the following command:

$ echo $PS1

Here are the backslash-escape special characters:

• \u: Current username
• \h: Hostname
• \W: Current working directory
• \$: Will display # if the user is root; otherwise it will display $ only
• \@: Current time in 12-hour AM/PM format

Now, we will modify our Bash. Run the following command:

$ PS1="[\\u@\\h \\W \\@]\\$"

Now, we will write a command to change the colors.

To make the text color blue, run the following command:

$ PS1="[\\u@\\h \\W \\@]\\$\\e[0;34m"

 

 

Now we, will see the tput command. Run the following...