Mac export PS1 doesn't handle escaped commands

Question

I'm just trying to change the terminal prompt in macOS Sierra. Nothing fancy, I just need to know the current path.

In my ~/.bash_profile I'm adding

export PS1="[\w] > "

I know that \w should be replaced by current full path but none of the escape characters seems to work on my Mac. I just get the same string without evaluating, so my prompt looks like

[\w] >

I've tried many different PS1 strings without luck. I also tried using .bashrc instead bash_profile.

Any ideas?

So you're actually running Zsh and not Bash. I don't know how Zsh handles prompt strings, unfortunately. — Benjamin W., Feb 20 '17 at 02:48
@BenjaminW. Yes! My fault. You're right. I didn't think about that. It seems these commands are not supported by Zsh. It is working now. Thank you very much. If you want to answer this question I'll be glad to mark as the correct one. — rmvz3, Feb 20 '17 at 02:57

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 20 '17 at 02:59

3

I suspect you're running a shell that doesn't understand the \w escape in the prompt string. If echo $0 returns something other than -bash, you have to use whatever that shell understands:

answered Feb 20 '17 at 02:59

Benjamin W.

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 05 '23 at 14:46

0

Run the following command to change your shell to bash (you will be prompted to enter your password). Restart the "Terminal" after that.

chsh -s /bin/bash

answered May 05 '23 at 14:46

Unmesh

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Mac export PS1 doesn't handle escaped commands

2 Answers2