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Trying to change my command prompt in OS X 10.8 / Mountain Lion. Changes to ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile do not make any difference. Like:

export PS1="\W \$"

It defaults to the host name ("\h\%"). Even if I try to set PS1 in the terminal, it changes but displays the variables literally, as below:

ws10% PS1="\W \$"
\W $

(with ws10 being the host name)

My ~/.bashrc file:

export PS1="\W \$ "

Any ideas? I keep getting lost when I cd up and down the directory structure! Thanks a lot.

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Clearly the bashrc in your home directory is getting sourced since you're seeing the changes to your prompt. At this point, I'd recommend copying the system bashrc from /etc and starting fresh. Edit the PS1 variable after copying it over. – ephsmith Aug 17 '12 at 15:17
I don't think bashrc is getting sourced... the changes to bashrc don't show up in the terminal at all. The change above was from literally typing PS1 at the command prompt – John Harper Aug 17 '12 at 15:20
Okay. That's a potentially different problem. ~/.profile really is a good place for this. Regardless, you should see the update if you export PS1 at the commandline. Strange. – ephsmith Aug 17 '12 at 15:37

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Typically on Mac OS X, only .bash_profile is executing when starting a new terminal. A common solution is to source one file into the other, for example in ~/.bashrc:

[ -r ~/.bash_profile ] && source ~/.bash_profile

Apart from that, your example works perfectly fine for me when put in .bash_profile. If you still experience problems, maybe you are overlooking something else?

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But default value for PS1 in Mac OS is set in /etc/bashrc. It's done conditionally--i.e if PS1 exists (it's a login shell) then PS1 is assigned a value. All that happens in bashrc. – ephsmith Aug 17 '12 at 14:58
@ephsmith, my point is ~/.bashrc is typically not executed when starting a new shell. – Gerry Aug 17 '12 at 14:59
try moving your profile or bash_profile to bashrc and see what happens. It is sourced for all shells--not just login shells. – ephsmith Aug 17 '12 at 15:03
@ephsmith, I am talking about ~/.bashrc, not /etc/bashrc – Gerry Aug 17 '12 at 15:05
Also, /etc/bashrc is sourced in /etc/profile, that's why it is executed for all shells. – Gerry Aug 17 '12 at 15:07
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up vote 2 down vote

I copied my .bashrc and .profile from an old mac and was seeing this issue. It came down to the fact that .bashrc was checking for a specific terminal emulation name "xterm-color". In Mountain Lion, xterm-color was renamed to xterm-16color and a new xterm-256color emulator was added:

check to see if your .bashrc has this check:

case "$TERM" in
    xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac

and add the new term names, so it looks like this:

case "$TERM" in
    xterm-color)    color_prompt=yes;;
    xterm-16color)  color_prompt=yes;;
    xterm-256color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac
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up vote 0 down vote

My .bashrc reads:

PS1="\[\e[0;32m\]\u@monkey:\w\$ \[\e[0m\]"

i.e. no 'export' in front of the PS1 setting. Does it help? I surely get the prompt I have specified. In addition this line

source ~/.bashrc

in .bash_profile should also help is you set the prompt in .bashrc.

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PS1="\[\e[0;32m\]\u@monkey:\w\$ \[\e[0m\]" gives me a new command prompt of \[\e[0;32m\]\u@monkey:\w$ \[\e[0m\] ... just copied/pasted that from my terminal – John Harper Aug 17 '12 at 15:13
The only difference would be that without the export, your prompt will not be set in child processes (for example when executing /bin/bash to start a new shell). – Gerry Aug 17 '12 at 15:14
is your prompt definition after: if [ "$PS1" ]; then </prompt/> fi? – user1256923 Aug 17 '12 at 15:16
/etc/bashrc starts with: if [ -z "$PS1" ]; then return fi PS1='\h:\W \u\$ ' – John Harper Aug 17 '12 at 15:30
why is fi in front of the PS1 definition? also, what about the -z? – user1256923 Aug 17 '12 at 15:36

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