Table B-3 shows a summary of the prompt customizations that are available. The customizations \[ and \] are not available in bash versions prior to 1.14. \a, \e, \H, \T, \@, \v, and \V are not available in versions prior to 2.0. \A, \D, \j, \l, and \r are only available in later versions of bash 2.0 and in bash 3.0.
Table B-3. Prompt string customizations
| Command | Meaning |
|---|
| \a | The ASCII bell character (007) |
| \A | The current time in 24-hour HH:MM format |
| \d | The date in "Weekday Month Day" format |
| \D {format} | The format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation; the braces are required |
| \e | The ASCII escape character (033) |
| \H | The hostname |
| \h | The hostname up to the first "." |
| \j | The number of jobs currently managed by the shell |
| \l | The basename of the shell's terminal device name |
| \n | A carriage return and line feed |
| \r | A carriage return |
| \s | The name of the shell |
| \T | The current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format |
| \t | The current time in HH:MM:SS format |
| \@ | The current time in 12-hour a.m./p.m. format |
| \u | The username of the current user |
| \v | The version of bash (e.g., 2.00) |
| \V | The release of bash; the version and patchlevel (e.g., 3.00.0) |
| \w | The current working directory |
| \W | The basename of the current working directory |
| \# | The command number of the current command |
| \! | The history number of the current command |
| \$ | If the effective UID is 0, print a #, otherwise print a $ |
| \nnn | Character code in octal |
| \\ | Print a backslash |
| \[ | Begin a sequence of non-printing characters, such as terminal control sequences |
| \] | End a sequence of non-printing characters |
