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2.4.6 Customizing the Prompt

The following variables are available for customizing the appearance of the command-line prompts. Octave allows the prompt to be customized by inserting a number of backslash-escaped special characters that are decoded as follows:

‘\t’

The time.

‘\d’

The date.

‘\n’

Begins a new line by printing the equivalent of a carriage return followed by a line feed.

‘\s’

The name of the program (usually just ‘octave’).

‘\w’

The current working directory.

‘\W’

The basename of the current working directory.

‘\u’

The username of the current user.

‘\h’

The hostname, up to the first `.'.

‘\H’

The hostname.

‘\#’

The command number of this command, counting from when Octave starts.

‘\!’

The history number of this command. This differs from ‘\#’ by the number of commands in the history list when Octave starts.

‘\$’

If the effective UID is 0, a ‘#’, otherwise a ‘$’.

‘\nnn’

The character whose character code in octal is nnn.

‘\\’

A backslash.

Built-in Variable: PS1

The primary prompt string. When executing interactively, Octave displays the primary prompt PS1 when it is ready to read a command.

The default value of PS1 is "\s:\#> ". To change it, use a command like

octave:13> PS1 = "\\u@\\H> "

which will result in the prompt ‘boris@kremvax> ’ for the user ‘boris’ logged in on the host ‘kremvax.kgb.su’. Note that two backslashes are required to enter a backslash into a string. See section 5 Strings.

Built-in Variable: PS2

The secondary prompt string, which is printed when Octave is expecting additional input to complete a command. For example, when defining a function over several lines, Octave will print the value of PS1 at the beginning of each line after the first. The default value of PS2 is "> ".

Built-in Variable: PS4

If Octave is invoked with the --echo-input option, the value of PS4 is printed before each line of input that is echoed. The default value of PS4 is "+ ". See section 2.1 Invoking Octave, for a description of --echo-input.