Question

I’m looking for a way to make the cygwin terminal more compact, or an alternate terminal that is more compact. Currently, every command I enter has a header line above it with username and pwd, and there is a blank line trailing every command. For instance:

username ~
$ cd tmp

username ~/tmp
$ 

3 lines for every 1 line of command. I frequently work on a small screen, which makes all this wasted space quite irritating. Is there a setting somewhere I can alter to prevent all this wasted space? Or, perhaps another terminal?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

That’s the default shell prompt set by Cygwin.

To use a smaller prompt in your current terminal:

PS1='$ '

To make the change permanent, put that command in your ~/.bashrc file.

You can set the prompt to just about anything you like, as explained by the bash manual (there are several variables that control different prompts; $PS1 is the main one).

It’s important to remember than in Cygwin (as in Linux and Unix), the terminal program is a separate program from the shell that runs in it. The prompt is controlled by the shell; bash is the default. The graphical display is controlled by the terminal emulator, which could be rxvt, mintty, xterm, or even the Windows terminal that normally runs a DOS-like shell.