Customize Zsh Pt.2 - User Prompt

Yes, Oh My Zsh is awesome! That’s the first thing I installed when I switched from Bash to Zsh and I used it for a few years.

Past that time, I realized that in my daily use, the only features I was taking advantage was:

Autocompletion and history-based autocompletion using the arrow keys.
The fancy multi-line and colorful user prompt showing the working directory, and the switching color after the fail/success of the previous command execution.
The git repository info at the user prompt.
The z command, provided by the ZSH-z plugin.

I couldn’t help myself but thinking that the Oh My Zsh framework was much more than I needed. I decided to remove Oh My Zsh and reset Zsh from scratch, so I could configure and install only the features I needed.

This is a four-part post series explaining how to set up those features on a fresh new Zsh installation:

Customize Zsh Pt.1 - Autocompletion

Customize Zsh Pt.2 - User Prompt 👈

Customize Zsh Pt.3 - Git Info

Customize Zsh Pt.4 - ZSH-z Plugin

Custom User Prompt

As in other shells, the user prompt is set by the variable PS1.

To create a custom prompt, command substitutions and shell expansions are used, helping to achieve the following goals:

Apply line breaks to improve readability.
Apply different colors to different sections of the user prompt.
Display the # character if the current user is the root user, or the > if the current user is non-privileged.
Switch the color of the user character (green/red) depending on the previous command exit status.

How to Set Up

Add the following code into the bottom of the .zshrc file:

# USER PROMPT
  
# enable command-subsitution in PS1
setopt PROMPT_SUBST
  
NL=$'\n'
  
PS1='$NL%B%F{cyan}%3~%f%b$NL%B%(?.%F{green}.%F{red})%(!.#.>)%f%b '

Source the .zshrc file again, in the Zsh shell type:
```
source ~/.zshrc
```

And here’s what you get:

Understanding the PS1 Code

PS1 code may seem messy at first sight so, let’s break it down to understand the parts and it’s meanings:

%B %b Start and stop boldface mode.
%F{green} %f Start and stop using green as the foreground color.
%3~ Show current working directory, but it starts with $HOME replace it by ~. The integer 3 defines the number of trailing components of the current working directory to show (applying 0 shows the whole path).
%(?.%F{green}.%F{red}) Is a conditional substring that checks the exit status from the previous command and sets the foreground color to green if success or to red if error.
- %(<condition>.<if true>.<if false>) Encapsulates the conditional substring.
- The ? condition checks the previous exit status of the last command.
%(!.#.>) Is another conditional substring that checks whether the current user is root (condition !) and shows # if true or show > if false (non-privileged user).
NL=$'\n' Is a tweak, a NL variable is being created to hold the new line character, avoiding quote character conflicts inside PS1. The variable $NL is used inside PS1 to define a line break.
(To learn more please run man zshmisc and see SIMPLE PROMPT ESCAPES and CONDITIONAL SUBSTRINGS IN PROMPTS.)

Now the Zsh user prompt looks great and provides useful information!
Part 3 shows how to set the user prompt to display git repository information.

Customize Zsh Pt.3 - Git Info

Useful links & references:

Zsh Documentation (man -k zsh to list each Zsh man page section)

Footnotes:

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As English is not my native language, I apologize for the errors. Corrections are welcome.
Contact: cli [@] alldrops [.] info.