The PS1 variable in .bash_profile contains the formatting for the login bit of a terminal prompt.
My PS1 variable: PS1="\[3[1;32m\]\u\[3[1;30m\]@\[3[0;34m\]\h\[3[1;30m\] \[3[0;30m\]\W \[3[1;30m\]\$\[3[0m\] " (green username@blue server: black location)
PS1 variables:
\a an ASCII bell character (07) \d the date in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g., "Tue May 26") \e an ASCII escape character (033) \h the hostname up to the first `.' \H the hostname \j the number of jobs currently managed by the shell \l the basename of the shell's terminal device name \n newline \r carriage return \s the name of the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion following the final slash) \t the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format \T the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format \@ the current time in 12-hour am/pm format \u the username of the current user \v the version of bash (e.g., 2.00) \V the release of bash, version + patchlevel (e.g., 2.00.0) \w the current working directory \W the basename of the current working direcory \! the history number of this command \# the command number of this command \$ if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $ \nnn the character corresponding to the octal number nnn \\ a backslash \[ begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt \] end a sequence of non-printing characters
PS1 Colours:
Black 0;30 Dark Gray 1;30 Blue 0;34 Light Blue 1;34 Green 0;32 Light Green 1;32 Cyan 0;36 Light Cyan 1;36 Red 0;31 Light Red 1;31 Purple 0;35 Light Purple 1;35 Brown 0;33 Yellow 1;33 Light Gray 0;37 White 1;37