Re: Really Long Command Prompt

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:00 PM, Benjamin Lindner <address@hidden> wrote:
> John W. Eaton wrote:
>> On 26-Jan-2010, Benjamin Lindner wrote:
>>
>> | IMO there should be some indication of the cwd. Since there's no gui,
>> | and I'm not sure there is a way to indicate it in the console window
>> | title, I've put it in the prompt.
>> | It's the default in the standard console prompt on windows, so having it
>> | also in octave kind of follows the default settings.
>> |
>> | This is not iron-cast of course, if it annoys everybody else, then I'll
>> | drop it.
>>
>> I haven't counted precisely how many, but we do see a number of
>> complaints about the long prompt, and people seem annoyed and of
>> course confused about how to change it since there is no gui button
>> for that.  OTOH, I don't seem to ever recall seeing a complaint that
>> the default prompt doesn't show the current directory.
>
> Well, in the binaries I provided the prompt has always included
> the cwd, so it's clear no one complained about it /not/ including it :)
>
>> So I think it
>> will generate less noise if you undo the customization.  Or, you can
>> leave it and every time there is a complaint about the long prompt
>> posted to one of the Octave lists we'll forward it to you.  :-)
>
> Now this I call a strong argument :)
> Ok, maybe it's a too personal opinion to have cwd in the path by
> default, I'll remove this for 3.2.4, no problem.
>
> Now if anybody complains about it missing, you know ... :)
>
> benjamin
>

Here's an idea: what about allowing the PS1 variable to be a function
handle? Then you could supply a function that displays the path but
shortens it using an ellipsis if it's longer than, say, 25 characters.

-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek, PhD
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz