Well ok its not just a plain colored prompt, what I would like to use is this:
txtred='\e[0;31m' # Red bldgrn='\e[1;32m' # Green txtrst='\e[0m' # Text Reset PROMPT_COMMAND=' \ if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then \ PROMPT_PREFIX="$txtred"; \ else \ PROMPT_PREFIX="$bldgrn$? "; \ fi ' PS1='$(echo -ne "$PROMPT_PREFIX")'"\$\[$txtrst\] " This is basically taken from http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Color_Bash_Prompt and the version there seems to have the same problems. This is worthwhile craziness I think as it makes the normal prompt unobtrusive and the commands and output easy to see, while still making prompt lines easily distinguishable in the scrollback. And commands that error are easily seeable. And when using wild weird grammar you don't have to continually type '|| echo yip' to everything to see if it works. And it uses green for 'fail' and red for 'succeed' in keeping with the shell's zero-is-true approach to life. But unfortunately it somehow causes readline to get confused, I think. When doing things like up arrow or reverse search part of some old commands seem to get stuck as a prefix in what is displayed, though the command works find when found. Also, multiline commands don't seem to work right (it wraps back over the same line). Britton