Customizing Your Environment

If you have any questions about stuff you want to customize, email me and I'll add the answer on this page.

Customizing Your Shell

Not sure what shell you're running? Try echo $SHELL

• Configuring tcsh to change your prompt (include the host name, the current directory, and the command number) and add tab completion.
  1. If you don't have a .cshrc file, grab this one. Skip to step 5.
  2. Open ~/.cshrc
  3. Add to the bottom of the file:

     # get the prompt right
if ($?tcsh) then
  set prompt="%S%m%s[%h] [%~/]%# "
  # complete is really cool.... Check tcsh man page for more info
  # this will only consider directories in cd completions
  complete cd p/1/d/ # Directories only
else # it's csh
  set prompt="`hostname| sed -e 's/\..*//'`> "
endif


  4. Save the file
  5. Run source ~/.cshrc Admire your new prompt.

Customizing Emacs

Customizing foreground and background:

• Put the following file in your home directory (if you don't have it already): .Xdefaults. Name the file .Xdefaults

  The .Xdefaults file modifies the defaults for your X server. You can customize Emacs' foreground and background by modifying the colors for the Emacs*Foreground and Emacs*Background settings.

  To reset your environment immediately, run xrdb .Xdefaults. Otherwise, you can wait until you log in again and your defaults will be reset.

Customizing font colors:

• Put the following file in your home directory: .emacs. Name the file .emacs

  This file will turn on the colors, change the default colors for your syntax highlighting, and fix the deletion key.

  Alternatively, you can try this .emacs file if you have a darker background (Make sure you rename the file from "alt_emacs" to ".emacs") or this .emacs, which works for black or white backgrounds.

Now that you have a starting point (the .emacs file), you can customize your colors to be whatever you want by modifying your .emacs file. To get you started, I'm posting a link to a list of colors available for emacs.

It's fun, but don't spend too much time customizing your colors! Just make sure that it makes programming easier for you.

Customizing your Xterm

• Put the following file in your home directory (if you don't have it already): .Xdefaults. Name the file .Xdefaults

  The .Xdefaults file modifies the defaults for your X server. You can customize your Xterm's foreground and backgrounds by modifying the colors for the XTerm*Foreground and XTerm*Background settings.

Customizing X