Remove the long Directory listing in the shell prompt

Question

I would like to remove the long listing of the current directory in the shell prompt.

Its sometimes annoying when you are using a small shell window and it occupies the whole space in the window

I would rather prefer the just the current directory at the prompt.

root@Kiran:~/Downloads/Director1/Director2/Director3/Director4# I would prefer something like : root@Kiran:..Directory4#

or Better even,

root:Directory4#

Thanks

Answer 1

Try this:

export PS1='\u:\W\$ '

Answer 2

You want to use \W and not \w when you export/set your PS1 variable:

export PS1='\u:\h \W #'

Answer 3

With Bash version 4+ you can set

export PROMPT_DIRTRIM=1

in your .bashrc. The prompt for a non-root user:

user@host:~/.../dir>

and for root

host:.../dir #

Answer 4

Another trick in addition to the ones above is too put a newline near the end of your prompt (\n$) so that what you type has the full length of the terminal:

mattb@flat:~/.../work_notes/admin
$ 

From my ~/.bashrc:

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    # the \n\$ at the end puts the prompt on a newline
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;35m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\n\$ '
else
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi

# I don't want a huge path on display
PROMPT_DIRTRIM=2