My PS1 and PS2 Bash prompts: function colorprompt { status="$?" bold="\[\033[1m\]" cyan="\[\033[1;36m\]" red="\[\e[0;31m\]" off="\[\033[m\]" if [ “$status” -eq 0 ] then export PS1="$bold$cyan$$off " else export PS1="$bold$red$$off " fi export PS2="$bold>$off " } export PROMPT_COMMAND=colorprompt The color of the prompt is cyan if the last exit status was zero, otherwise it’s red. I disliked having little space to type commands in deeply nested directories, and I’m usually the same user on the same machine, so I only have the prompt $ terminator.