Short Bash prompt – export PS1="\W\$ "

You can have a nice, deep directory stucture – and still keep your prompt short and tidy.

The problem

I like nice, deep, meaningful directory structures. I don’t like a prompt like this:

tkarvinen@somehost:~/foocompany/internal/projects/alpha/clientx/internal/config/puppet/modules/somehotframework/manifests/ $

Solution

tkarvine...$ export PS1="\W\$ "
manifests$

Now the prompt shows only the last folder in the directory tree. I can type ‘pwd’ when I want to see it all.