Hello everyone i am using the system provided ksh /bin/ksh and I was wondering if there was a nice PS1 prompt I could use similar to what I used to use in bash, i.e.: Symbol $ or # depending if the user is root Show ~ if I am in the home directory Some colors (you can show me with random colors, i will set them accordingly) Can anybody help me?

netbsdnoob This works with NetBSD's ksh , ksh93 , dash and bash : PS1='$( printf "\\033[1;37m" )'\ '$( id -un )@$( expr $(hostname) : "$[^.]*$" ) '\ '$( X="$PWD/"; Y="$HOME/"; '\ ' [ "${X#$Y}" = "$PWD/" ] && echo "$PWD" || echo "~${PWD#$HOME}" ) '\ '$( printf "\\033[0m" )'\ '$( [ $(id -u) -eq 0 ] && echo "#" || echo "$" ) ' if(window.hljsLoader && !document.currentScript.parentNode.hasAttribute('data-s9e-livepreview-onupdate')) { window.hljsLoader.highlightBlocks(document.currentScript.parentNode); } Be careful copy exactly as shown, and not leave any trailing blanks. NetBSD's /bin/sh will need a set -o promptcmds (if that option exists in the shell). EDIT : Use a different method instead of expr as the RHS string (ie. the path) may have blanks or regex meta-chars which will need to be quoted.

Reasonable PS1 with system ksh

netbsdnoob

Hello everyone i am using the system provided ksh /bin/ksh and I was wondering if there was a nice PS1 prompt I could use similar to what I used to use in bash, i.e.:

Symbol $ or # depending if the user is root
Show ~ if I am in the home directory
Some colors (you can show me with random colors, i will set them accordingly)

Can anybody help me?

rvp

netbsdnoob Here.

nettester

I use this (with mksh but i guess it'll work with NetBSD ksh too):

HOSTNAME="$( hostname )"
EUSER="$( id -un )"
if [ "$EUSER" = root ]; then
	PS1=$'[\e[37;1m$EUSER@$HOSTNAME:${PWD/#$HOME/\\~}\e[0m]# '
else
	PS1=$'[\e[37;1m$EUSER@$HOSTNAME:${PWD/#$HOME/\\~}\e[0m]$ '
fi

Probably not exactly elegant (and i guess you can get away with just using $USER instead of defining and using $EUSER on a system that's a little more sane than Linux) but it does the job. There's also colors (those \e[... codes) in it even if color just means bright white. You can put pretty much any ansi escape sequence in your shell prompt even if a lot of them don't make to much sense there. Wikipedia has a pretty extensive list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code

netbsdnoob

nettester unfortunately it does not work,
I get: ksh: : bad substitution

can it be that you are using something specific to your mksh?

netbsdnoob unfortunately it does not work,

ksh does not support the same prompt syntax as bash. Google it/Duck duck go it, whatever you fancy ... but, do some reading.

It's possible to do it but, it has been a long time since I've used ksh and those dotfiles are long gone. So, ... go figure.

nettester

netbsdnoob My bad. @pin is right. I just tried and the configuration i use doesn't even remotely work with NetBSD's ksh. I didn't think mksh would differ that much. Sorry.

PS1="$( printf '[\e[37;1m$USER@$HOST:foo\e[0m]# ' )"

This at least correctly includes the ansi escapes but i don't know how to fix the substitution (or how to make it evaluate the prompt at display time which is needed to get the current value for $PWD and not just whatever value it had when $PS1 was defined) for $HOME.

By the way: I noticed the hostname is already available as $HOST and NetBSD probably isn't doing any funky things to $USER in relation to su so setting up $EUSER and $HOSTNAME like in my earlier code is generally superfluous.

kc9udx

man is user's best friend. (At least with NetBSD)

netbsdnoob

nettester Thanks for the attempt, I will try to read more and solve the riddle, or wait for somebody else to help.

nettester

netbsdnoob Any time. By the way: It seems @rvp already gave you some working code. It's kinda tricky but i guess ksh simply doesn't have a feature to evaluate variables at display time so overloading cd is probably the way to go if you want to display the current directory in your prompt.

rvp

netbsdnoob This works with NetBSD's ksh, ksh93, dash and bash:

PS1='$( printf "\\033[1;37m" )'\
'$( id -un )@$( expr $(hostname) : "\([^.]*\)" ) '\
'$( X="$PWD/"; Y="$HOME/"; '\
'   [ "${X#$Y}" = "$PWD/" ] && echo "$PWD" || echo "~${PWD#$HOME}" ) '\
'$( printf "\\033[0m" )'\
'$( [ $(id -u) -eq 0 ] && echo "#" || echo "$" ) '

Be careful copy exactly as shown, and not leave any trailing blanks. NetBSD's /bin/sh will need a set -o promptcmds (if that option exists in the shell).

EDIT: Use a different method instead of expr as the RHS string (ie. the path) may have blanks or regex meta-chars which will need to be quoted.

netbsdnoob

rvp
Woow pretty cool, almost perfect, still one issue.

If i am in $HOME this prints ~ correctly as it should
But now if i am in $HOME/.config/myconfig/whatever I have in my prompt:

/home/username/.config/myconfig/whatever

So is there any way to fix this too?

rvp

netbsdnoob My bad. Fixed.

netbsdnoob

rvp great! Loved it!

Do you know by any chance how can i bind Ctrl+L to clear and Alt+. to loop over the list of previous arguments as it happens in bash?

Oh also ctrl+arrow keys would be cool to have

rvp

netbsdnoob ksh(1) should tell you create macros for the last 2 functions you want. For Ctrl-L, it doesn't look like there's any editing command to clear the screen. You'll probably have to hack the source to add such a feature.