Macos – Tilde (~) in Mac OSX terminal pathway

macmacosterminal

I am new to the Mac OSX environment, and was programming in C using the terminal. To change the current directory, I used the command cd .. to go one level up. However, this had a weird effect on the terminal. A clear screen on my mac terminal used to show this path always- 

manishs-mbp:manishgiri$

However, since the time I did cd ..(to go one level up), the current pathway of the terminal has changed to: 

manishs-mbp:~ manishgiri$

As you can see, there is a tilde now in the pathname. On reading about it, it looks like this tilde is used to represent the home directory in mac OS. However, I would like to get rid of it, as it was earlier.

Could you please provide a way to do that? Any help would be highly appreciated.

Thank You.

EDIT- Adding more information

I tried to think of it, and realized that cd .. would have taken me one level up. So, I entered pwdin the terminal to see the current pathway (this is with the tilde situation), and got this- 

manishs-mbp:~ manishgiri$ pwd
/Users/manishgiri

Maybe the tilde appears because I am now by default in the /Users(Home) folder. If that's the case, then how do I revert it back to the previous settings to get rid of the tilde?

Best Answer

In virtually all modern Unix shells, ~ is shorthand for your home directory. On OS X, this expands to /Users/accountname, in most Linuxes it will be /home/accountname.

The shell you are using (presumably BASH) has its prompt configured to show the current working directory's basename. For instance, if you were to cd Downloads, you'll likely see your prompt change to:
manishs-mbp:Downloads manishgiri$

If you don't want to see your current directory in your BASH prompt, you'll need to edit your prompt. You can see your current prompt configuration by running:
echo $PS1
You'll likely get a response of:
\h:\W \u\$

The \W indicates the Basename of your current directory (e.g. ~ or Downloads), you need to get that out of the prompt.

At the most basic, to remove the path just run: PS1="\h \u\$"

If you want the change to be permanent, you'll need to change/create the PS1 variable declaration in your shell's config file (i.e. .bashrc). You'll likely want to read the BASH manual pages or spend some time with a search engine if you want more information on BASH prompt customization.

That said, if you're new to the terminal, I suggest leaving it as-is. It's actually quite helpful to have your working directory displayed in your prompt and saves you from having to constantly run pwd. To each their own though.

EDIT: Maybe I'm overthinking it and you just want a simple (possibly hacky) way to make your prompt not have the working directory basename. If so:
echo 'PS1="\h:\u\$" >> ~/.bashrc
then open a new Terminal window.

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