No More Dollar Signs





	POSTED: 31 October 1996

No More Dollar Signs
Uncover the mystery behind .profile

By Brian Shicoff

Ever look over someone's shoulder in the computer lab while you are finishing your C program or Lit Hum paper and see something amiss? Instead of having the normal "dollar sign" preceding their typed words on cunix, this student has something different, such as the name of the computer they are on, or the subdirectory they are in. Where did that '$' go?

Well, all you need is one file and your boring little '$' can be majestically changed into a 'aloha|/h/u1/a/abc123>'. The name of the file is called .profile and the following will show you what to add to this file to configure your user environment when you login. If you already have a .profile, then you might consider adding the text below to it.

In order to edit the file, you will need to pick up a FAQ on unix or familiarize yourself with a good unix editor like emacs (or pico). The following lines should be added to your .profile in order to display what local machine you are on and what directory you are presently in.

export HOST=`hostname` export HOSTNAMES='aloha bonjour ciao konichiwa merhaba namaste inibara sawasdee mhoro locarno ahola kiaora ahnnyong vanakam labdien' export PS1='$HOST|$PWD>'

By adding these few lines, other people will be looking over your shoulder wondering how come you don't have just a dollar sign. Another cool thing about using those lines in your .profile, is that when you change to a different directory, your 'aloha|/h/u1/a/abc123>' will update to 'aloha|/h/u1/a/abc123/newdirectory>', or whatever new directory you have moved to.

In addition to just getting your dollar sign to change to something a bit more fancy, you can add aliases to eliminate unnecessary, repetitive typing. For example, lets say whenever you login, you check to see if your friend at Carnagie Mellon is logged in (so maybe you can initiate a ytalk). Instead of always typing 'finger [email protected]', you can add an alias to your .profile in the following way:

alias friend='finger [email protected]'

If you are familiar with Ms-Dos, you might want to add strings like the following:

alias dir='ls -l' alias cls='clear'

Finally, you can add items to your .profile which just execute once after your login, including the following:

date xfiend

Or, if you ALWAYS go straight from logging in to checking your email, include the following:

pine

With the addition of these lines to your .profile you will accomplish two things: First, any novice who looks at your screen will think you're really smart; and second, you will have reconfigured your environment and made cunix a lot easier to use.

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