Shell – How to display only the current directory while using powerline in the terminal prompt.

promptshell

Recently I installed the Powerline in the linux to enhance the look and feel of my terminal. It works great, however, it display 3 levels of directories in the prompt while traversing. Consider below example

unikx> ...>Dir1>Dir2>Dir3

where unikx is my username and Dir3 is my current working directory. The problem is, I have a habit of giving long names to directories. So due to above behaviour of Powerline showing 3 levels, I dont have enough space on that current line to write my commands and eventually my commands appear in the next line which I dont like.

So how do I customize powerline to show only 2 or current dir in the prompt like below:

unikx> ...>Dir3

unikx> ...>Dir2>Dir3

Thanks.

Best Answer

I think the setting you're looking for is in something like

<powerline_install_dir>/config_files/themes/shell/__main__.json

on this line:

"dir_limit_depth": 3

(Note that your installation may be different from mine so you might have to search for the file.)

See Powerline quick setup guide. This reddit post might also help. (If you're in a hurry edit that file directly.)

FYI, a simple alternative is the powerline command's --width flag which takes max width of the prompt in columns/characters. E.g. powerline --width 40 .... This will dynamically resize segments of the prompt as needed which usually means shrinking the path segment.

You probably won't know if you like it until you try it. That way you can see exactly how it behaves for different console widths, different paths, with whatever other segments you are displaying, etc.

I couldn't find a straightforward way to set this but looking at the code it seems that setting COLUMNS=X (X is desired width) in your environment before invoking the powerline.sh startup script will do the trick.

Related Solutions

Bash – Abbreviated current directory in shell prompt

Try this:

PROMPT_COMMAND='PS1X=$(perl -pl0 -e "s|^${HOME}|~|;s|([^/])[^/]*/|$""1/|g" <<<${PWD})'

or, pure bash:

PROMPT_COMMAND='PS1X=$(p="${PWD#${HOME}}"; [ "${PWD}" != "${p}" ] && printf "~";IFS=/; for q in ${p:1}; do printf /${q:0:1}; done; printf "${q:1}")'

then

PS1='\u@\h ${PS1X} $ '

produces (notice the ~ for ${HOME}):

rfkrocktk@work-laptop ~/D/P/W/m/s/m/j/c/tkassembled $

I improved my answer thanks to @enzotib's

Bash Prompt – Show Only Current and Parent Directory

Bash's prompt control features are rather static. If you want more control, you can include variables in your prompt; make sure you haven't turned off the promptvars option.

PS1='${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"} \$ '

Note the single quotes: the variable expansions must happen at the time the prompt is displayed, not at the time the PS1 variable is defined.

If you want more control over what is displayed, you can use command substitutions. For example, the snippet above loses the ~ abbreviation for the home directory.

PS1='$(case $PWD in
        $HOME) HPWD="~";;
        $HOME/*/*) HPWD="${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"}";;
        $HOME/*) HPWD="~/${PWD##*/}";;
        /*/*/*) HPWD="${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"}";;
        *) HPWD="$PWD";;
      esac; printf %s "$HPWD") \$ '

This code is rather cumbersome, so instead of sticking it into the PS1 variable, you can use the PROMPT_COMMAND variable to run code to set HPWD and then use that in your prompt.

PROMPT_COMMAND='case $PWD in
        $HOME) HPWD="~";;
        $HOME/*/*) HPWD="${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"}";;
        $HOME/*) HPWD="~/${PWD##*/}";;
        /*/*/*) HPWD="${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"}";;
        *) HPWD="$PWD";;
      esac'
PS1='$HPWD \$'

Since the shortened prompt only changed on a directory change, you don't need to recalculate it each time a prompt is displayed. Bash doesn't provide a hook that runs on a current directory change, but you can simulate it by overriding cd and its cousins.

cd () { builtin cd "$@" && chpwd; }
pushd () { builtin pushd "$@" && chpwd; }
popd () { builtin popd "$@" && chpwd; }
chpwd () {
  case $PWD in
    $HOME) HPWD="~";;
    $HOME/*/*) HPWD="${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"}";;
    $HOME/*) HPWD="~/${PWD##*/}";;
    /*/*/*) HPWD="${PWD#"${PWD%/*/*}/"}";;
    *) HPWD="$PWD";;
  esac
}
PS1='$HPWD \$'

Note that you don't need to, and should not, export PS1, since it's a shell setting, not an environment variable. A bash PS1 setting wouldn't be understood by other shells.

P.S. If you want a nice interactive shell experience, switch to zsh, where all of these (prompt % expansions largely encompassing tcsh's, chpwd, etc.) are native features.

PS1='%2~ %# '

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – Abbreviated current directory in shell prompt

Bash Prompt – Show Only Current and Parent Directory

Related Question