PROMPT_PWD(1)

🌸 prompt_pwd(1) — the fish-shell era ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to prompt_pwd from the fish-shell fam 🐟💖 this little icon prints your pwd all pretty for your prompt, and honestly? it ate.

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✨ NAME ✨

prompt_pwd — prints your pwd all cute and prompt-ready 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

prompt_pwd

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So prompt_pwd is a function that prints your current working directory in a way that's actually suitable for prompts — no giant ugly path stretching across your terminal, no cap. It swaps your home directory out for "~" 🏠 and shortens every path component except the last one down to a default of one character.

Wanna change how many characters each path component gets? You can pass --dir-length= or set fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length to the number of characters you want. 🎀

⚠️ heads up queen: setting it to 0 or an invalid value will disable shortening entirely. This defaults to 1.

And if you want to keep some components from getting chopped, pass --full-length-dirs= or set fish_prompt_pwd_full_dirs to the number of components. This defaults to 1, which keeps the last component. 🫶

Oh and also — if you give it any positional arguments, prompt_pwd shortens those instead of PWD. iykyk 😌

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -d or --dir-length MAX — shortens the components down to MAX characters each. This overrides fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length. 💫
• -D or --full-length-dirs NUM — keeps NUM components (counted from the right) at full length, no shortening. This overrides fish_prompt_pwd_full_dirs. 🌈
• -h or --help — displays help about using this command. the classic 🫡

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✨ EXAMPLES ✨

okay bestie, watch this slay in action 👑

>_ cd ~/
>_ echo $PWD
/home/alfa

>_ prompt_pwd
~

>_ cd /tmp/banana/sausage/with/mustard
>_ prompt_pwd
/t/b/s/w/mustard

>_ set -g fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length 3
>_ prompt_pwd
/tmp/ban/sau/wit/mustard

>_ prompt_pwd --full-length-dirs=2 --dir-length=1
/t/b/s/with/mustard

>_ echo (prompt_pwd | string split /)[-1]
mustard

>_ echo (string join / (prompt_pwd | string split /)[-3..-1])
s/with/mustard

like… /t/b/s/w/mustard?? the way that path got absolutely compressed and still makes sense. iconic. 🔥

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✨ Copyright ✨

fish-shell developers 💜

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and that's the whole vibe 🦋 version 4.9, dated Sep 08, 2026 — mwah, hope your prompt is gorgeous now, bestie 💖✨🎀