[Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

Lone_Wolf · 2026-07-18 11:03:00

The bash prompt has w and W to show the current directory in the prompt.
Unfortunately I have multiple folders with the same name but in different locationsfor different purposes..

example :

~/Documents/Games/MM7
~/Downloads/Games/MM7

~/pkgbuilds/llvm-minimal-git
~/git-repos/AUR/llvm-minimal-git

Showing the full path in the prompt is overkill and likely way to long but showing the path relative to $HOME for folders under $HOME would be very handy .

So instead of MM7 it should be Documents/Games/MM7 or Downloads/Games/MM7

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (Yesterday 12:05:31)

5hridhyan · 2026-07-18 11:48:12

I did this by using a custom function

meow() {
    case "$1" in
        "$HOME")
            printf '~'
            ;;
        "$HOME"/*)
            printf '~/%s' "${1#$HOME/}"
            ;;
        *)
            printf '%s' "$1"
            ;;
    esac
}

and used `PS1='$(meow "$PWD") \$ ' ` in prompt
...

Edit
or

export PROMPT_DIRTRIM=3
PS1='\u@\h \w \$ '

like if your goal is to always show the full path under your home directory (for ex. always showing ~/Documents/Games/MM7) then PROMPT_DIRTRIM is not the right tool...

Edit2:
changed the function to accept the path as an argument instead of relying on the global $PWD variable

Last edited by 5hridhyan (2026-07-18 12:40:48)

Lone_Wolf · 2026-07-18 12:06:28

Yup, PROMPT_DIRTRIM=3 comes close .

Will test that and the function you posted in the next days to verify which works best for me.

seth · 2026-07-18 16:00:05

Have you ever tried just the basic https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/an … sh-config/ ?
https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/an … hlighting/ (you'll have to source that) is also fun.

(the grml config auto-elides the prompt to 40 chars max)

Lone_Wolf · 2026-07-19 11:35:26

Nope, only times I used zsh was during installing from the iso (atleast I think the iso uses grml zsh) .

Sofar the whole path from ~ to folder is TMI as ~/pkgbuilds/llvm-minimal-git/src/llvm-project starts 4 levels deep and has atleast 4 nested levels itself .
PROMPT_DIRTRIM=2 is not enough info, 3 is usable.

[panoramix@mjoelnir ~/.../oolite/KicheEmergencyShields/Scripts] (master)$

The total size of that is ~ 70 chars, how would grml handle that ?

How does grml handle longer prompts then 40 chars ?

seth · 2026-07-19 11:45:52

It left-elides the path, not the rest of the promt - or rather the token '%40<..<%~%<< ' does that in zsh - the grml config provides an abstraction layer to the config.
You can run "prompt -h grml" to get an oversight how to customize that.

It's a bit like a less annoying OMZ … and maybe a way to covert you to use ze zuperior zhell

Lone_Wolf · Yesterday 12:05:09

Looked at zsh with grml-zsh-config . The completion is better then that used in bash.

Things I'd have to change :

Seeing (git)-(master) is too much info as I don't use other VCS then git
The truncation of longer paths is annoying for me as I very much prefer path display stopping at a / .
ls sort order is case sensitive which I hate for directory output .
(under bash ls displays clang.ini before CMake.txt)

The question comes down to : Is the extra power the zsh shell gives worth the effort needed to tweak it to my wishes ?
For bash I have done very little tweaking.

I will keep zsh+grml installed for now.

As for the topic of this thread :
PROMPT_DIRTRIM=3 works well, marking as [Solved].

seth · Yesterday 12:54:32

zstyle ':vcs_info:*'              actionformats "%F{red}%b%f:%F{green}%a%f "  "zsh: %r"
zstyle ':vcs_info:*'              formats       "%F{red}%b%f "  "zsh: %r"

# limit prompt to trailing three segments
zstyle ':prompt:grml:*:items:path' token '%3~'

ls sorts according to LC_COLLATE which is likely set to some C (or unset) in zsh but set to some utf8 locale bash?

Lone_Wolf · Today 09:35:10

LC_COLLATE is unset on my system.

$ alias | grep ls=
ls='command ls --color=auto -v'

Looks like that comes from /etc/zsh/.zshrc which is owned by grml-zsh-config.
It's the -v that caused it, apparently it does affect more then number sort.

Copying alias ls='ls --color=auto --group-directories-first' for my ~/.bashrc solved the issue

grml-zsh-config comes with a lot of aliases that I don't need (my ~/.bashrc only has 4 aliases)

I just noticed zsh (probably ZLE?) has different ideas then me about what the home-key on keyboard should do.

Not removing it yet, but my feeling sofar is that zsh/grml authors and I have different ideas about how things should work.

Arch Linux

#1 2026-07-18 11:03:00

[Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#2 2026-07-18 11:48:12

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#3 2026-07-18 12:06:28

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#4 2026-07-18 16:00:05

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#5 2026-07-19 11:35:26

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#6 2026-07-19 11:45:52

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#7 Yesterday 12:05:09

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#8 Yesterday 12:54:32

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

#9 Today 09:35:10

Re: [Solved] How to show longer part of $PWD in bash prompt ?

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