Re: OT: Exporting a BASH prompt from a script

From: Hal Vaughan (hal_at_thresholddigital.com)
Date: 03/27/05

  • Next message: Ron Johnson: "Re: udev howto" 
    To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2005 19:40:36 -0500

    On Saturday 26 March 2005 05:45 pm, Shreyas Ananthan wrote:
    > Hal Vaughan <hal@thresholddigital.com> writes:
    > > I'm having a strange problem.  I've installed some new systems and I can
    > > change the prompt as I want, but if I write any kind of script, and
    > > change the prompt within the script, it doesn't change the
    > > prompt.  This is even with a short 1 line script that does nothing but
    > > change the prompt.
    > >
    > > Here's the prompt I'm trying to use (which includes escape characters,
    > > which seem to be causing the problem -- bash seems to see them as
    > > commands):
    > >
    > > PS1="\e[35;40m[\u@\h:\W]\\$\e[0m "
    > >
    > > I know my old .bashrc changed the prompt (only PS1), but I don't remember
    > > doing anything other than PS1="{my prompt}" to get it to do that.  Now it
    > > won't work.  I tried to export PS1 so it would be available outside the
    > > script, but export didn't like some of the characters in it.
    > >
    > > So how can I export a prompt I create in a script (like .bashrc) to use
    > > outside the script (in normal command line)?
    >
    > When you run a script, it runs inside a new shell which is terminated
    > when the script is completed. If you want the commands in the script
    > to affect the current shell you want to do
    >
    > debian$ source ./<script name>
    >
    > instead of
    >
    > debian$ ./<script name>
    >
    > Hope that helps.

    I wasn't aware of that point, however, even when I type "source scrptname", it
    still happens.

    I think there's two problems: 1) it won't export the prompt (even when "source
    name" is used), and 2) Bash seems to be interpreting the escaped characters
    as commands.

    Hal

  • Next message: Ron Johnson: "Re: udev howto"

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