B.2. Prompt String Customizations

Table B-3 shows a summary of the prompt customizations that are available. The customizations \[ and \] are not available in bash versions prior to 1.14. \a, \e, \H, \T, \@, \v, and \V are not available in versions prior to 2.0. \A, \D, \j, \l, and \r are only available in later versions of bash 2.0 and in bash 3.0.

Table B-3. Prompt string customizations

Command	Meaning
\a	The ASCII bell character (007)
\A	The current time in 24-hour HH:MM format
\d	The date in "Weekday Month Day" format
\D {format}	The format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation; the braces are required
\e	The ASCII escape character (033)
\H	The hostname
\h	The hostname up to the first "."
\j	The number of jobs currently managed by the shell
\l	The basename of the shell's terminal device name
\n	A carriage return and line feed
\r	A carriage return
\s	The name of the shell
\T	The current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
\t	The current time in HH:MM:SS format
\@	The current time in 12-hour a.m./p.m. format
\u	The username of the current user
\v	The version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
\V	The release of bash; the version and patchlevel (e.g., 3.00.0)
\w	The current working directory
\W	The basename of the current working directory
\#	The command number of the current command
\!	The history number of the current command
\$	If the effective UID is 0, print a #, otherwise print a $
\nnn	Character code in octal
\\	Print a backslash
\[	Begin a sequence of non-printing characters, such as terminal control sequences
\]	End a sequence of non-printing characters