Found myself with some rare free time, queuing up some small posts. Here’s a bash function I’ve been using for about a year now to name terminal windows. This is helpful to organize the 10-20 terminals I might have open at any given time across many virtual desktops. Unlike some tricks, I actually use it all the time so I figure that’s one person that finds it useful… so here it is in case someone else might also find it useful.

From .bashrc, it is very simple:

function n() {
    if [ "X" = "X$1" ]; then
        echo "give at least one parameter for window name"
        return 1
    fi
    NAME="$*"
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$NAME\007"'
    export PROMPT_COMMAND
    return 0 
}

Nothing to it… just names the current terminal window.

$ n CLUSTER 3
$ ssh tfreeman@cluster3...

I like CAPS usually and I set my title bar font all big:

This overrides the default setting which was to print the current directory. Here’s how to do that…

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'