[TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #

[ron at ronnatalie.com]

The early shells (Thompson, Mashey)  used "% " for regular user (and # for root).   The Thompson shell didn't have a setable prompt.
The Bourne shell (V7) had setable PS1 (start of command) and PS2 (continuation prompts) and set the to "$ " and "> " respectively.    Again # was used for root.


-----Original Message-----
From: TUHS <tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org> On Behalf Of Brian Zick
Sent: Monday, August 6, 2018 4:54 PM
To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Origins of shell prompt suffixes % $ > #

Hi,

I usually just lurk on this list, but I've been curious lately about the origin of the symbols at the end of various interactive prompts.

ksh (etc), bash, sh use $ for non-root, and # for root

csh, tcsh and zsh use % for non-root and # for root

fish and things like mysql, ftp, and interactive shells for a lot of scripting languages use >

rc uses ;

Where do these different conventions originate?

B