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As what we’ve discussed in the post of Customizing the terminal prompt, by redefining the the environment variable PS1, we could change the prompt to almost anything we want it to be, including the color and text decoration of the prompt.

When redefining the environment variable PS1, ANSI escape codes are used for defining a color, including text color, text decoration and background color.

Structure of ANSI escape code

The ANSI escape code that defining a color has the structure of staring with the Control Sequence Introducer, followed by the Color Code, and ending with a Finishing Symbol:

  • Control Sequence Introducer consists of a <ESC character> and a [.
  • Color Code consists of text-color, and/or text-decoration, and/or background-color value(s) with separation ; if more than one values are given.
  • Finishing symbol is m.

For example, the ANSI escape code \e[35;1m that defining a color consists of Control Sequence Introducer(\e and [), Color code(color value 35 which means purple, and text decoration value 1 which means Bold, separated by ;) and, at last, the finishing symbol(m).

Control Sequence Introducer

Control Sequence Introducer, i.e. CSI, is a

Color code