David Greer mentioned that /etc/profile contains: : > export PS1='shell/iX> ' and went on to suggest a better version...but one that still contains a ">" in it. Ahh...something that Gavin and I got bit on recently... I no longer have a ">" in my prompt for a very practical reason: It's dangerous! Let's say your prompt is "foo>", and your current working directory is /bin , and you want to run a program that happens to reside in /bin (say, /bin/ls), and you start to type: foo> ls blah (i.e., you were prompted with "foo>", and you type "ls blah"...but no <return> yet) Now, you accidentally hit the HP "<enter>" key (no, *not* the <return> key ... the "transmit this line" key!!!!!) What does the computer see by the time it gets the <return> at the end if the "transmit this line"? simple: ls blahfoo> ls blah ------- ^ ------------ | ^ | \<---- sent by the <enter> key (along with a <return> at end) | \<---- typed by the user What does the shell do? it opens "ls" as the output file for your command, because of the @#$%^ ">" in the line! Poof! You've just lost the "ls" program. (assuming you had the ability to write onto that file) Been there, done that :( On Unix (HP-UX and AIX) I now use: PS1='($HOSTNAME$LVL) $PWD: ' and my .kshrc file (I use ksh) has in it: let LVL=LVL+1 In this manner, my prompt tells me: 1) name of computer I am on; 2) depth of "ksh" nesting. (a "ksh" or a simple "su" re-invokes .kshrc each time, thereby incrementing the nesting counter... a poor-mans simulation of HPCIDEPTH) 3) my current working directory 4) and *no* ">" ! -- Stan Sieler [log in to unmask]