Re: truncating the path in the bash prompt?

[Matthew Woehlke]

Dan Nicolaescu wrote:
> Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
>
>   > In tcsh  %c can be used to only show the last few directory names in a
>   > path (also see the ellipsis variable). 
>   > 
>   > For example for this directory: 
>   > 
>   > /lib/modules/2.6.21-1.3194.fc7/kernel/drivers/char/hw_random/
>   > 
>   > the prompt can look like this:
>   > 
>   > user@machine:...drivers/char/hw_random> 
>   > 
>   > when using: set prompt = "%n@%m:%c03%# "
>   > 
>   > Given the tendency of directory hierarchies to get deeper, it is very
>   > useful to be able to see some more context, so it would be great if
>   > bash also supported something similar.
>   > Sure, this can be implemented by using shell commands to set the
>   > prompt, but it would be much nicer if it was built in.
>   > 
>   > Thanks
>
> Any comments on this old posting?

This is why my prompts are tending to migrate to having a \n between the 
directory and the end of the prompt :-).

Actually, a feature that would be REALLY helpful is a way to specify 
certain directory strings that should be abbreviated. For example, I 
build KDE from sources, with source in /usr/local/src/kde/svn/trunk and 
build objects in /var/local/build/kde/svn/trunk. It would be great if 
bash could abbreviate these as, say, "$src$' and '$build$', 
respectively. (That is, I would somehow tell bash that I want the 
leading directory component "/foo/whatever/" abbreviated as "bar", where 
both of those are arbitrary strings. As another example, abbreviate 
"/net/remote2/corp/home3/" as "~" :-). Yes the slash should be stripped; 
the idea being that "/net/remote2/corp/home3/dan" would become "~dan".)

--
Matthew
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