Open new xterm window with different PS1

tux_tina

I'm trying to open a new xterm window with a different PS1. I've tried: xterm -e '/bin/bash -i -l -c "export PS1=foo"' This immediately closes xterm. So I tried: xterm -hold -e '/bin/bash -i -l -c "export PS1=foo"' which keeps xterm open, but I can't use it, i.e.: there is no prompt. Then played around with various options like: xterm -e "export PS1=foo; $SHELL" and so on ... But none seem to work. Can you please help? $ xterm -version...

Originally asked by Joe Koenig on Stack Exchange (askubuntu) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

bash documentation quite clearly says: If the -c option is present, then commands are read from the first non-option argument command_string . So, bash executes the command export PS1=foo and terminates. bash will not assign PS1 from the environment, so there is no point in exporting it. What you can do is using some environment variable to set PS1 . Like $ tail -n 3 ~/.bashrc if [ -n "$MY_BASH_PROMPT" ]; then PS1="$MY_BASH_PROMPT" fi $ and $ xterm -e "export MY_BASH_PROMPT='PROMPT1> '; $SHELL" xterm -e "export MY_BASH_PROMPT='PROMPT2> '; $SHELL"

Full answer by Andrei Borzenkov: https://askubuntu.stackexchange.com/a/1568633 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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