Windows PowerShell: changing the command prompt

Question

Using Windows PowerShell, how do I change the command prompt?

For example, the default prompt says

PS C:\\Documents and Settings\\govendes\\My Docume         


        

Answer 1

At the prompt, I like a current timestamp and resolved drive letters for network drives. To make it more readable, I put it in two lines, and played a bit with colors.

With CMD, I ended up with

PROMPT=$E[33m$D$T$H$H$H$S$E[37m$M$_$E[1m$P$G

For PowerShell, I got the same result with:

function prompt {
    $dateTime = get-date -Format "dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss"
    $currentDirectory = $(Get-Location)
    $UncRoot = $currentDirectory.Drive.DisplayRoot

    write-host "$dateTime" -NoNewline -ForegroundColor White
    write-host " $UncRoot" -ForegroundColor Gray
    # Convert-Path needed for pure UNC-locations
    write-host "PS $(Convert-Path $currentDirectory)>" -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Yellow
    return " "
}

Which is a little more readable :-)

BTW:

• I prefer powershell_ise.exe $PROFILE instead of (dumb) Notepad.
• If you like to debug your prompt() with breakpoints, you should rename the prompt-function to anything else (or try it in another file). Otherwise you might end up in a loop: When you stop debugging, prompt() is called again and you stop at the breakpoint, again. Quite irritating, at first...