Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!mailrus!ames!ncar!oddjob!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: A blank line before the unix prompt?
Keywords: prompt
Message-ID: <12934@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 10 Aug 88 03:35:46 GMT
References: <3809@okstate.UUCP> <6591@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1236@ficc.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 58

In article <1236@ficc.UUCP> spenser@ficc.UUCP (spenser aden) writes:
>alias cd 'cd \!* ; set prompt="<stuff>"`pwd`"<stuff> \
>(\!) " '    # set prompt string

(The <stuff>s are ESC [ = 5 h and ESC [ = 5 l, but ESC characters
disappear over USENET.  Good thing too. :-/ )

>...  This works fine when I first login and until I try to 'cd' to
>any directory, but when I try to 'cd' it says 'Unmatched "."' and the
>'cd' fails.  I suspect that it's not able to carry the alias over to
>the second line using the \ method spelled out in the previous article ....

The solution for about half the problems with the C shell is the same:
Use more \ characters.

You have to write

	alias cd 'cd \!* ; set ... \\
	... '

so that the alias itself has one \ in it.

Some years ago, Fred Blonder and I were experimenting with working-
directory prompts.  The regular sorts of wd prompts were not hard, but
we wanted to get `~' compression, so that one would see, e.g.,

	[~] ==> cd /tmp
	[/tmp] ==> cd
	[~] ==> cd foo/bar
	[~/foo/bar] ==> cd baz
	[~/foo/bar/baz] ==>

Unfortunately, csh insisted on expanding the `~' whenever we ran the
output of `dirs' through awk to get the first string.  Quoting helped:
here is what we came up with (his version):

	alias set_prompt 'set prompt = '"'"'['"'"'"`dirs|awk '"'"'{print "\$1"}'"'"'`"'"'"'] ==> '"'"''
	alias cd '\!:0-$; set_prompt'
	alias pushd '\!:0-$; set_prompt'
	alias popd '\!:0-$; set_prompt'
	set_prompt

After some thought, I reduced this (after changing the style) to

	alias set_prompt 'set prompt="[\\!] `dirs|awk '\''{print "\$1"}'\''` "'
	alias cd 'cd \!*; set_prompt'
	alias pushd 'pushd \!*; set_prompt'
	alias popd 'popd \!*; set_prompt'
	set_prompt

Of course, for faster operation, one can write

	set prompt=(`dirs`)

but again csh insists on expanding `~'....
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris