Terminal Tips: Customize the look of your Terminal

Ha--thought that looked like the Bronx. Nice to see another uptown alumnist here in the land of Apple esoterica.

Hey Thomas, I took it with my Canon Powershot G1 on low-light settings several years ago. It's a pic from my old apartment in the Bronx, near Arthur Avenue in Belmont. Works really well as a Terminal backdrop.

Thanks Scott--Right now I've got GeekTool running Top for me and integrating it as part of my desktop. I don't work in tech, so I doubt I'll have any need for exporting a processes text fill and uploading to servers, but now that I'm hip to 'piping' I'll try to come up with some other workflow application. I shall not rest until I come up with an excuse for typing into a prompt.

Hey CK - That's a nifty picture. Mind me asking if you took it or where you found it? I like cityscapes -- is it part of NYC's? Thanks.

ASZero, the real power of the Terminal is exposed with a concept called 'piping.' Most commands in the terminal create and output (in this case the 'top' command outputs a list of the currently running processes). Now, executing single commands is probably easier to do using the GUI, however lets say you want a text fill of what processes are running and you want to upload it to a webserver for some reason. In the GUI that would be a pain (though you could use Applescript), but in the terminal you can just pipe the output of top to a text file and then send that text file to a server with FTP. I am sure there are lots of other examples that show the power of the Terminal, that is the one that just popped into my mind.

That's a swell trick, I've got mine set to a 50% transparency so my desktop pic peeks through. A nice blend between the two creates a clean look. But I have to say, I'm a very GUI-centric Mac user, and have tried numerous times to come up with an excuse to use the Terminal, simply because I dig the aesthetic of the thing. And I love applying keyboard technique to speed up data access and repetitive functions (big Quicksilver fan). But having made several attempts to learn some basic Terminal-fu, reading beginning turorials and the like, I have yet to come up with any functions that I couldn't otherwise achieve through more elegant solution within the GUI. All I ask is for one really good thing I can do with the Terminal that can't be acheived way faster via GUI + Quicksilver. Any takers?

changing your prompt is also something that can be fun and useful. if you're using bash (Panther's default), you do this by setting the PS1 environment variable. i put this in .bashrc to set mine every time i log in: export PS1="[033[01;34m]u@h033[00m]] 033[01;32m]w033[00m]n> " that can also be run by itself to change your prompt (it should all be on one line).

this is great. i knew you could change the colors of text and the bacground but not add a pic. thats really really cool. thanks