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From: lvc@danews.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Prompt changing on the fly - Oops
Message-ID: <376@danews.ATT.COM>
Date: Sun, 18-Jan-87 15:09:47 EST
Article-I.D.: danews.376
Posted: Sun Jan 18 15:09:47 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Jan-87 02:04:17 EST
References: <432@ethz.UUCP> <374@danews.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: lvc@danews.UUCP (Larry Cipriani, x4999, 2B220, 45230)
Distribution: world
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Columbus OH
Lines: 34
Keywords: prompt
Xref: watmath comp.unix.questions:682 comp.unix.wizards:616


>What shell are you using?  It is possible in the Korn shell.
>Impossible in the Bourne shell.  I don't know about the C-shell.
>My prompt includes a clock that is updated at every return.

Later that same day:

Oops, it is possible in the Bourne shell.  What you can do
is define a function (not well known in the Bourne shell)
to do your cd's and set PS1.

chdir()
{
    case ${#} in
	1) cd $1 && PS1="`pwd` "
	   ;;
	*) echo "usage: chdir directory" >&2
	   return 1
	  ;;
    esac
}

Now just use chdir instead of cd. 

In the Korn Shell, you can do something like:

PS1='${PWD} '

This works because PS1 is *evaluated* every time it is printed.
You can use cd and PS1 is updated automatically.
-- 

Larry Cipriani   Cornet 353-4999 AT&T (614) 860-4999
{ihnp4|cbosgd}!cbsck!lvc   AT&T Network Systems rm 2B-220