My Extravagant Zsh Prompt

I took the minimal approach with my prompt. Under normal circumstances, my prompt looks like this:

  ~$

I only show the username and hostname in my prompt if remote or unusual: [ -n "$SSH_CONNECTION" ] || [ "$USER" != "josh" ]. If either of those, I prefix my prompt with "user@host:". Apart from that, I show the exit status of the last command run, if non-zero. In general, I try to hide all boring information and show useful information only.

If anybody's interested, here's my considerably less extravagant Zsh prompt[1]. It shows the current directory along with what top level directory you're in on the right prompt along with VCS info. The left side shows backgrounded jobs marked with pipes but otherwise is just a $ so command lines wrap less frequently. It uses the vcs_info functionality from zshkit[2].

[1] http://gr.ayre.st/s/screenshots/git/git_working.png [2] https://github.com/mattfoster/zshkit

    function prompt_grayrest_setup {
      unset PS1 PS2 PS3 PS4 PROMPT RPROMPT
      autoload colors zsh/terminfo
      if [[ "$terminfo[colors]" -ge 8 ]]; then
        colors
      fi
      # Colours accepted as arguments
      local u_col=${1:-'green'}
      local h_col=${2:-'blue'}
      local d_col=${3:-'yellow'}
      local d_col_pre='blue'
      local job_color='yellow'
      local n_tru=${4:-'blue'}
      local n_fal=${5:-'yellow'}
      # looks like: ee1mpf@eepc-tsar16 ~ $
        ps1=(
        # "%{$fg_bold[$u_col]%}%n@"
        # "%{$fg_bold[$h_col]%}%m "
        "%1(j.%{$fg_bold[$job_color]%}.)"
        "%4(j.%{$reset_color$fg[$job_color]%}[%{$reset_color$fg_bold[$job_color]%}%j%{$reset_color$fg[$job_color]%}] .%3(j.||| .%2(j.|| .%1(j.| .))))"
        "%{$reset_color%}"
        "%{%(?.$fg[$n_tru].$fg[$n_fal])%}$ "
        "%{$reset_color%}"
      )
      ps2=(
        "%_ %{$fg[$d_col]%}-> "
        "%{$reset_color%}"
      )
      rps1=(
        '%{$fg[$b_col]%}${vcs_info_msg_0_}%{$reset_color%}'
        " %{$fg[$d_col]%}%(4~.%{$fg[$d_col_pre]%}%-1~%{$fg[$d_col]%} %2~.%3~) %{$reset_color%}"
      )
      PS2="${(j::)ps2}"
      PS1="${(j::)ps1}"
      RPS1="${(j::)rps1}"
    }

Why oh why do you need your battery life displayed in your prompt? There are plenty of other places to display it.

I just use oh-my-zsh (https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh) to quickly enable half these things.

➜ civ5replays git:(master) ✗

Looks like that now, the X means uncommited changes. civ5replays being the folder, the rest being... the rest!

My favourite prompt-hack is to colourise the $ when the previous command exits non-zero, here's how I have my bash PS1 set up: http://www.metabrew.com/article/updated-bash-ps1

If you exit `top` by pressing q, it exits with non-zero - who knew? :)

May I suggest to use this prompt for git users[1]. I use it daily and I am really happy with it.

[1]: http://sebastiancelis.com/2009/11/16/zsh-prompt-git-users/

I love how Steve's articles get rediscovered and resubmitted over and over.