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Terminal titles, KDE, Gnome etc...

Just an informational sort of question here:

Does anyone know how the current working dir is displayed at the top of the terminal window in some terminal applications ? I know that it can be done with $PS1 at the prompt in bash but how is it constantly updated and sent to the terminal app ?

is some variable set to $pwd and updated with each call of cd ?

I'm curious because I've been playing with aterm and eterm on my mac and linux boxes and was sondering how to get these apps to display a similar window title.

Thanks

Set the environment variable $PROMPT_COMMAND. In my ~/.bashrc (which is sourced from .bash_profile so it's always set) I have this:

Code:

# Change the window title of X terminals 

case $TERM in

        xterm*|rxvt|Eterm|eterm|aterm)

                PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'

                ;;

        screen)

                PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\033\\"'

                ;;

esac

Håkan

Thanks that worked great!

So its actually written into the various terminal apps to call that variable each time the directory changes and update the title bar accordingly ?

Thanks again.

Yes, it is called each time. From `info bash':

PROMPT_COMMAND
If set, the value is executed as a command prior to issuing each primary prompt.

Alternatively, you can use a bash function `nameTerminal' like this:

Code:

# Set terminal title

# @param string $1  Tab/window title

# @param string $2  (optional) Separate window title

# The latest version of this software can be obtained here:

# http://fvue.nl/wiki/NameTerminal

function nameTerminal() {

    [ "${TERM:0:5}" = "xterm" ]  && local ansiNrTab=0

    [ "$TERM"      = "rxvt" ]    && local ansiNrTab=61

    [ "$TERM"      = "konsole" ] && local ansiNrTab=30 ansiNrWindow=0

        # Change tab title

    [ $ansiNrTab ] && echo -n $'\e'"]$ansiNrTab;$1"$'\a'

        # If terminal support separate window title, change window title as well

    [ $ansiNrWindow -a "$2" ] && echo -n $'\e'"]$ansiNrWindow;$2"$'\a'

} # nameTerminal()

This way, you can set the title manually, whenever you like. Personally, I find it useful the set the title when I change to a project directory only. I've written a `cdp' utility for that; you could put `nameTerminal' in the .cdprc file. See: http://fvue.nl/wiki/Bash:_Change_dir...o_project:_cdp

Freddy Vulto
http://fvue.nl