How to set the command prompt's color in Bash?

Question

Browsing the last command's results in Bash is a bit hard because the command prompt and results are the same color. This makes it hard to separate the results of consecutive commands.

How do I change the color to pink for example?

Answer 1

@Rob is right; specifically, to change to light red (pink is not an available color):

PS1 = "\[\033[1;31m\]\u:\w\$\[\033[0m\] "
#      ^^^^^^^     ^^                    Begin/end ANSI escape
#             ^^^^^                      "light red foreground"
#                    ^^^^^^^             Your original prompt
#                           ^^^^^^^^^^^  Reset color back to default foreground

You need to use ANSI escape sequences (in this case 1;31m, the code for "light red foreground") which are enclosed by \[\033[ and \].

Edit: Light purple may be closer to your desired color; the PS1 change is left as an exercise for the reader.

reference @ the linux documentation project