mjhjmtu

No matter what directory I enter, the terminal always shows me the root directory which is "Nidas-MBP"

Nidas-MBP% cd Projects
Nidas-MBP% ls
09-Selector-Exercise-Starter.zip My Little Form
09_Selector_Exercise_Starter Prefix Free File
Blog Recursion Practice
Callbacks Themes
Callbacks-Exercise Todo-Vanilla
Copywriting css3-contact-form.zip
Freelancer Theme webpack-deepdive
Frog Chase

Nidas-MBP% cd webpack-deepdive
Nidas-MBP% ls
es6-todomvc
Nidas-MBP% 

I have tried adding the following command to end of the ~/.bashrc file and the ~/.profile file but the terminal still remained unchanged.

PS1='[u W$] '

When I run echo "$PS1" it says

%m%#

I found two lines PS1=[ W]$ PS1='[ W]$ ' inside ~/.bash_profile, so I replaced them both with PS1='[u W$] ' and typed source ~/.bash_profile. In response, my terminal started saying [u W$] instead of Nidas-MBP.

I have no idea what I should do now to bring it back to the way it used to be.

Completely reworked per JdeBP's observation, this is zsh not bash.

bash and zsh are two different shells, and use two different sets of files when you start them. bash uses .bash_profile, .bashrc, and .profile. zsh uses .zprofile, .zshrc, and others.

zsh also uses different syntax for dictating the prompt. echo $PROMPT will tell you the prompt's current setting. To display, e.g., your current directory at the prompt, add this to $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc (if ZDOTDIR is not set, zsh will use HOME instead):

PROMPT='%~> '
Source

Then either source ~/.zshrc or restart the terminal.

Obviously there must be something that changes PS1 after you set it.

To find where you can

• 
  

  Use grep in your home directory and in /etc.

  
  
  

  grep PS1 -r /etc $HOME
  

  
  



• Use set -x after you set PS1 to see where it is changed.



• Use strace to find out which file contains that value.

I had no idea there was a difference in commands between bash and zsh. Apparently, I was supposed to type PS1='%m %1d$ ' instead. So I did that inside the ~/.zshrc file and it works now.

https://superuser.com/questions/1108413/zsh-prompt-with-current-working-directory