Most people don't use the command line on a regular basis, so it can be a bit difficult to find the first time. Make sure you understand what the command is supposed to do first, especially if the command involves changing or removing files. Do not run a command just to see what it does. If you instruct the computer to erase all of your data, it will cheerfully proceed to do so. You have the capability to instruct the computer to do anything it has the capability of doing. NOTE: The command line, as with all power, has its risks. In order to give it commands, we must first start learning the language of the computer. Unfortunately, the computer does not speak English, or any other language spoken by humans (although it has recognizable elements). The computer is your obedient servant, and will attempt to carry out any command that it understands. The command line is, at its heart, simply a place where you type commands to the computer. Unfortunately, the price of this power is complexity: nobody ever said that ruling your computer would be easy. Using the command line, you can perform amazing feats of wizardry and speed, taming your computer and getting it to do precisely what you want. The command line is the ultimate seat of power on your computer. With more information, if you'd like to learn more. Here's another basic command line tutorial So you example would show white then green then red then white then yellow then reset to remove all colours.This tutorial is for beginner users who want to learn the basics For that see the zsh reference This shows that in the prompt %F makes everything after it have white foreground colour. However neither of those say anything about colours. There is also zsh prompt generator web site that will allow you to play around with what can be done

Simple example of the prompt are in the zsh introduction I would start there and build up. The code given for the second is almost certainly not what you want as the DATE variable is set when the shell starts and you probably want the date and time when the prompt is run.Īs a disclaimer I don't like most UNIX shells as the syntax is obscure to me as they were designed to let the user type as few characters as possible so I do not fully understand them so I would use non POSIX shells like fish which allows you to set the prompt from a web interface or understandable functions. Zsh is very well documented at Prompt is documented here (Also the first is not correct code in any language there is a missing PS1 and there should be no spaces around =) The second is zsh which is the current default shell.

The first is bash which was the default shell on OSX 10.3 up to 10.14.

The simple answer as to why the two pieces of code give different results is that they are written for two different languages.

Command prompt for macbook