On Mac/Linux the shell’s command prompt is typically fairly uninformative, displaying only the top level of the current working directory path. If you are currently at /home/me/sites/mysite, the prompt might look something like
[mysite]$ ...
This isn’t as useful as it could be. LinDesk details multiple ways to make the command prompt more informative. Based on the information there I now have the following PROMPT_COMMAND set in my ~/.bash_profile.
PROMPT_COMMAND='DIR=`pwd|sed -e "s!$HOME!~!"`; if [ ${#DIR} -gt 30 ]; then CurDir=${DIR:0:12}...${DIR:${#DIR}-15}; else CurDir=$DIR; fi'
PS1="[\$CurDir] \$ "
This now makes the same directory path above for /home/me/sites/mysite look like this
[/home/me/s...ite/public_html] $
