Abbreviated current directory in shell prompt?

Question

vim has a really nice feature which it utilizes in its paths when they're a bit long:

It abbreviates the path to the document in the tab at the top. Is there a way to do something similar to this so my bash prompt doesn't look like this:

rfkrocktk@work-laptop ~/Documents/Projects/Work/maventest/src/main/java/com/tkassembled/ $ 

Answer 1

Try this:

export PROMPT_COMMAND='PS1X=$(perl -pl0 -e "s|^${HOME}|~|;s|([^/])[^/]*/|$""1/|g" <<<${PWD})'

or, pure bash:

export PROMPT_COMMAND='PS1X=$(p="${PWD#${HOME}}"; [ "${PWD}" != "${p}" ] && printf "~";IFS=/; for q in ${p:1}; do printf /${q:0:1}; done; printf "${q:1}")'

then

export PS1='\u@\h ${PS1X} $ '

produces:

rfkrocktk@work-laptop ~/D/P/W/m/s/m/j/c/tkassembled $

I improved my answer thanks to @enzotib's

Answer 2

I like PROMPT_DIRTRIM in bash...

export PROMPT_DIRTRIM=2

will change your example prompt to...

rfkrocktk@work-laptop ../com/tkassembled/ $

It works for me.

Answer 3

Similar to @nicerobot answer, but somewhat shorter:

PROMPT_COMMAND='pwd2=$(sed "s:\([^/]\)[^/]*/:\1/:g" <<<$PWD)'
PS1='\u@\h:$pwd2\$ '

This will show the followin example output:

enzotib@acer:/h/enzotib$ cd
enzotib@acer:/h/enzotib$ cd /usr/share/doc/acpid/examples/
enzotib@acer:/u/s/d/a/examples$

Answer 4

The format for use in your PS1 is \W (see the PROMPTING section in the bash man page).

PS1="\u@\h \W\$ "

And you might want to read the other options there, you can do some cool stuff with your command line.