Dave Smith's Blog

I have the best bash prompt ever. It took a lot of hacking and googling, but here she is:

Notice that the smiley face and text colors change depending on the exit code of the last run command (red = failed, green = happy). This is handy, for example, after a big long build that has error messages buried in it, and the last line of output just isn’t that useful.

To make your prompt awesome, put this in your .bashrc and enjoy:

BLACK="\[\033[0;30m\]"
DARK_GRAY="\[\033[1;30m\]"
LIGHT_GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
LIGHT_BLUE="\[\033[1;34m\]"
GREEN="\[\033[0;32m\]"
LIGHT_GREEN="\[\033[1;32m\]"
CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\]"
LIGHT_CYAN="\[\033[1;36m\]"
RED="\[\033[0;31m\]"
LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1;31m\]"
PURPLE="\[\033[0;35m\]"
LIGHT_PURPLE="\[\033[1;35m\]"
BROWN="\[\033[0;33m\]"
YELLOW="\[\033[1;33m\]"
WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
DEFAULT_COLOR="\[\033[00m\]"

export PS1="\`if [ \$? = 0 ];
    then
        echo -e '$GREEN--( $LIGHT_CYAN\u$YELLOW@$LIGHT_CYAN\h$GREEN )--( $YELLOW\w$GREEN )-- :)\n--\$$DEFAULT_COLOR ';
    else
        echo -e '$LIGHT_RED--( $LIGHT_CYAN\u$YELLOW@$LIGHT_CYAN\h$LIGHT_RED )--( $YELLOW\w$LIGHT_RED )-- :(\n--\$$DEFAULT_COLOR ';
    fi; \`"

Happy bashing!