How to absalutely fully change terminal prompt to color

Question

its mind bogglingly supprising how hard it is to TOTALLY change terminal prompt graphic featurs.... Like

PS1

Or in my case color features.... I have edited /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc and /root/.bashrc

For those who want a quick solution i recommend just editing this file

~/.bashrc

So type this command and reAd through the file

pico ~/.bashrc

that file you just edited gets loaded every login. Or if you type the command "source ~/.bashrc" or ". ~/.bashrc"

Ok so after i did all that.... I STILL dont fully get color....

read test; $test

I type ls and get no color...

Or another example

Lol=ls
$Lol

Or another example, when i make an alias command

alias ls="ls -a"

No color

the problem is command is being executed by shell, and NOT by me..?

How can i just change the output to color... Always ^.^ im guessing i can just copy paste that section about fancy color from .bashrc somewhere. But i swear.... Why is this so hard... On my ipad i could just smash my face and it would work. Or on microsoft i click ENABLE COLOR for cmd.exe ^.^

I really really really mean ALWAYS, i want to go program cool stuf f but customizing my terminal is hard O.o and i program in the terminal..... I have too.... Because

90% of what i program is in perl, and i grew up sshing into servers and writing perl with emacs or pico or vi. So when i code i want to code in my terminal, and i want the output in color. Its something i never had the option of before.

I have never owned linux until now....

Answer 1

No worries mate, don't panic. You are a programmer and you have done fantastic things so flipping out over something quite simple is not you, right ?

So you left windows for linux, just like you could exchange your car with automatic gearbox for a mammoth transporter with 40 wheels and a 28 speed gearshift and now you are not feeling comfortable with the controls because it is not your beloved Holden Barina, right ?

That is okay, let's get down to it.

"the problem is command is being executed by shell, and NOT by me..?"

It always is, mate, it always is. On any system, even on windows.

"How can i just change the output to color... Always"

If you want Always colors, just change the color of your terminal like, yellow letters on a black screen...it's easy: Just go to the preferences of your terminal-emulator.

besides that...a lot of programs can be set to color output. We don't do that in the registry... no way!...we won't have that. We just put an entry in .bashrc, an alias... much easier than fooling around in the registry and break the whole system

"Why is this so hard"

Naaaah...You are kidding yourself mate, it is easy as kindergarten. You just have to get used to your new found power. No automatic gearbox remember ?

"On my ipad i could just smash my face and it would work."

Strange head you have, mate. If I smash my face on an iPad, it usually breaks.

"Or on microsoft i click ENABLE COLOR for cmd.exe"

Yeah..that is microsoft logic for you, mate. I always had to type "cmd" for cmd.exe .
Anyway, I have color all the time automagically.

"i want to go program cool stuf"

I am glad for you, mate. Programming is a blessing

"but customizing my terminal is hard O.o and i program in the terminal"

Awww...come on mate, you don't want to do that...you might want at least to use an editor but because you are from windows you're probably used to program on a GUI IDE right ? So back off the commandline and use geany , a full blown GUI IDE which has a lot of colors to tinker around with. When you grow up a bit with the system you can try doing terminal stuff.

"90% of what i program is in perl, and i grew up sshing into servers and writing perl with emacs or pico or vi. So when i code i want to code in my terminal, and i want the output in color. Its something i never had the option of before."

I think you are exaggerating a bit, mate. Nano is full color, mc is full color, emacs is full color, vi is full color, even htop is full color. Ubuntu's terminal and commandline-tools are set to full color out of the box. So tell me:

What did you do to your system that you don't have any color anymore? How did you break it ?