InfiniteRed

If you've been learning the command-line and you have the basics down (you should be, as the most effective way to use a computer is a combination of a GUI and command-line), the next step is to customize your environment.

The ability to fully customize your shell is one of the most powerful things about the command-line. It's a dry subject, and mastering it won't get you favors from the opposite sex (although it should), but it can be very useful.

There are many ways to customize your shell, but the first one you should learn is modifying your Bash startup files (assuming your shell is Bash, which is the default in OS X, Linux, and many other unices).

When I first learned how to customize bash, I found an overwhelming amount of information and opinion, which made it difficult. This article is intended to give you the fundamental concepts so that you can create your own startup files, and understand how they work. To give you an example, I go through a subset of my own files, section by section.

Color Scheme

This color scheme is based off of my popular IR_Black theme for TextMate.

When thinking of vim or vi, visually appealing UI doesn't normally enter your mind. But that isn't due to a lack of features, because its support for syntax coloring is one the best I've seen; the only thing slightly better is TextMate. It's due to the poor color schemes many people use.