13 votes

I force my shell prompt to the bottom of the screen

Posted by xk3
Tags: linux, cli, shell, personalization

Is it just me, or is it weird that every terminal starts at the top-left? After three commands, your prompt stays at the bottom of the screen for the rest of the session anyway.

I added this to my fish_greeting last month. (You could add something similar to .bashrc / .zshrc):

printf '\033[%s;1H' (math $LINES - 1)

It might take some getting used to but it feels a lot more natural. When opening a new window or pane, the prompt is always closer to the previous one so my eyes don't need to move as much.

It's a small subtle thing but I think it is an improvement. Return to teletype.

5 comments

  1. [2]
    tomf
    Link
    that's pretty neat, actually. For ZSH... printf '\033[%s;1H' $((LINES - 1))

    that's pretty neat, actually. For ZSH...

    printf '\033[%s;1H' $((LINES - 1))
    2 votes
    1. Narry
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Thank you, I used zsh and was about to be awake half the night looking for this… Edit to add, I popped the following into my ~/.zshrc: alias cls="clear; printf '\033[%s;1H' $((LINES - 1))" alias...

      Thank you, I used zsh and was about to be awake half the night looking for this…

      Edit to add, I popped the following into my ~/.zshrc:

      alias cls="clear; printf '\033[%s;1H' $((LINES - 1))"
alias clear="clear; printf '\033[%s;1H' $((LINES - 1))"

      cls is in there because I sometimes have a brain fart and type that instead.

      1 vote
  2. Akir
    Link
    Return to teletype indeed. The first thing I thought about when I read this was that it reminded me of the interface to trebuchet and other chat type programs. I actually did at one time access a...

    Return to teletype indeed. The first thing I thought about when I read this was that it reminded me of the interface to trebuchet and other chat type programs. I actually did at one time access a computer regularly with such an application due to the lack of terminal programs on public computers at the time.

    1 vote
  3. trim
    Link
    Generally speaking, my terminal will be full screen with decently large font, so I can actually read it, and a lot of the time it will be running some kind of ncurses based application such as vim...

    Generally speaking, my terminal will be full screen with decently large font, so I can actually read it, and a lot of the time it will be running some kind of ncurses based application such as vim or mc. I do understand the sentiment though. Part of my first job involved operating a telex machine for ordering, with one line of input and scrolling paper output. I can still remember the stupid telex address of that machine.

    Anyway, I suppose the closest I get these days is on my corporate windows machine running VS-Code with its little terminal view open in a 6 line window at the bottom of the application.

    1 vote
  4. GOTO10
    Link
    I once hacked my terminal to scroll the other way around. It's much better for your posture to look at the higher part of the screen most of the time.

    I once hacked my terminal to scroll the other way around. It's much better for your posture to look at the higher part of the screen most of the time.

    1 vote