[SOLVED] Reducing Length of File Bath in BASH

Kogami · 06-26-2013, 05:34 PM

Hey Guys,
First time here, but not the first time with Linux.

Occasionally I run into problems where I'll be working in deeply nested directories, and get directory paths like:

kogami@WorldPortal ~/Música/Classical Archive/Disks/Philips 55 Box/Beethoven Symphony 6 Pastoral and Violin Concerto/Symphony-6-Pastoral/

Is there anyway I can shorten the APPEARANCE of this path in my shell? If so, feel free to let me know. It can get in the way of certain file operations.

Regards,
Kogami

chrism01 · 06-26-2013, 09:02 PM

You need to edit the setting of $PS1 (aka prompt)
Try this

Code:

[\u@\h \W]\$

Note that this needs to be exported.
Its usually set in a login file; in my case (centos6.4) /etc/bashrc.
See this page for all the options http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-...up-prompt.html

Can I just mention that spaces in dir/file name is legal, BUT causes issues for cmds. Default in Linux is that input params to a cmd eg 'cd' are space separated, so I'd highly recommend using underscore or dash (as you have somewhat) instead.

Kogami · 06-27-2013, 09:14 AM

Hi,
Thank you so much for the tip. I was able to resolve the issue simply by replacing the "w" with "W" in my current $PW1 configuration. That way I was able to keep all the colors and whatnot. And since you mentioned it, is there a bash script one could use to replace all of the spaces in directory and filenames with hypens "-"? That would be useful so I don't end up with shell related issues.

Thank you for all your help.

Regards,
Kogami

chrism01 · 07-01-2013, 01:23 AM

Pretty common request; lots of threads here at LQ and on google.
Here's one with a few methods http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...the-file-names.
Do TEST carefully before using on live files (& of course have a backup first!)