Macos – How to have full directory path always shown in mac terminal (like linux terminal)

macosterminal.appUbuntu

In my ubuntu terminal I have always current directory shown completely. Just like this:

blabla@blublu:~/music/my_album/classical/beethoven$

But in my Mac (Mac OS X 10.6.5) terminal does not show the full path and it is like this:

blabas-MacBook-Pro:classical beethoven$

Is there anyway that I change mac terminal behavior to act like linux terminal?

Best Answer

To let bash return "user@hostname:path/to/directory$" as your prompt, add the following line to your ~/.bash_profile:

export PS1='\u@\H:\w$'

or

export PS1='\u@\H:\w$ '

if you like having a space between the $ and the command

to make the changes take effect immediately, run the following command in every open window (or restart Terminal):

source ~/.bash_profile

EDIT: A list of available strings can be found in the paragraph "PROMPTING" in the man page for bash (man bash):

PROMPTING

  When executing interactively, bash displays the primary prompt PS1 when it is ready to read a command, and the secondary prompt PS2 when it needs more input to complete a command.  Bash allows these prompt strings  to  be  customized  by
   inserting a number of backslash-escaped special characters that are decoded as follows:
          \a     an ASCII bell character (07)
          \d     the date in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g., "Tue May 26")
          \D{format}
                 the format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation.  The braces are required
          \e     an ASCII escape character (033)
          \h     the hostname up to the first `.'
          \H     the hostname
          \j     the number of jobs currently managed by the shell
          \l     the basename of the shell's terminal device name
          \n     newline
          \r     carriage return
          \s     the name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion following the final slash)
          \t     the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
          \T     the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
          \@     the current time in 12-hour am/pm format
          \A     the current time in 24-hour HH:MM format
          \u     the username of the current user
          \v     the version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
          \V     the release of bash, version + patch level (e.g., 2.00.0)
          \w     the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde
          \W     the basename of the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde
          \!     the history number of this command
          \#     the command number of this command
          \$     if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
          \nnn   the character corresponding to the octal number nnn
          \\     a backslash
          \[     begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt
          \]     end a sequence of non-printing characters
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