Command prompt
From Free net encyclopedia
←Older revision | Newer revision→
A command prompt (or just prompt) is a character or a sequence of characters used in a command line interface to indicate that the computer is ready to accept typed input. Command prompts usually end with characters such as $, #, : or > and often include other information, such as the path of the current working directory.
It is common to allow prompts to be modifiable by the user. In the proper environment, they may include colors, special characters, and other things like the current time, in order, for instance, to make the prompt more informative or visually pleasing, or to easily distinguish sessions on to different machines.
In MS-DOS and in the Windows command line interpreter the prompt is modifiable by issuing a prompt command or by changing the value of the %PROMPT% environment variable. The default C:\> style is obtained, for instance, with "prompt $P$G".
On Unix systems, the $PS1 variable can be used, although other variables also may have an impact on what appears on the screen (depending on what shell is being used). In the bash shell, a prompt of the form
[time] user@host: work_dir $
could be set by issuing the command
export PS1='[\t] \u@\H: $(pwd) $'de:Eingabeaufforderung
