How to have different settings for each window in GNU screen?

Question

Can I use different color setting (foreground and font) for each of the window that I create?

Answer 1

If you have a set of windows that you create when you start screen, you can put something like this into your .screenrc:

screen bash --init-file $HOME/.green
screen bash --init-file $HOME/.blue
screen bash --init-file $HOME/.red

The .red init file then contains:

# load standard bashrc file
. ~/.bashrc 

# set prompt and text color to red
export PS1="\e[0;31m[\u@\h \W]\$ \e[m "

A more general solution would use the WINDOW environment variable, which is set by screen when it creates a new window.

case $WINDOW in 
0)
   # red
   export PS1="\e[0;31m[\u@\h \W]\$ \e[m "
   ;;
1) 
   # blue
   export PS1="\e[0;34m[\u@\h \W]\$ \e[m "
   ;;
*)
   # no specific color
   export PS1="[\u@\h \W]\$ "
   ;;
esac