I wanted a way to change the powershell prompt, in particular to:

  • Display the current path in the Shell window
  • Change the prompt to “[LineNumber]:”
  • Show the stcck level when “pushd” is used

Then a colleague showed me this.

Add the following function to your current profile - it’s an override for the prompt method: 
function prompt {

#the old script...

#function prompt { "$" }

# FIRST, make a note if there was an error in the previous command
$err = !$?

# Make sure Windows and .Net know where we are (they can only handle the FileSystem)
[Environment]::CurrentDirectory = (Get-Location -PSProvider FileSystem).ProviderPath

# Also, put the path in the title ... (don't restrict this to the FileSystem
$Host.UI.RawUI.WindowTitle = "> {0} ({1})" -f $pwd.Path,$pwd.Provider.Name

# Determine what nesting level we are at (if any)
$Nesting = "$([char]0xB7)" * $NestedPromptLevel

# Generate PUSHD(push-location) Stack level string
$Stack = "+" * (Get-Location -Stack).count

# my New-Script and Get-PerformanceHistory functions use history IDs
# So, put the ID of the command in, so we can get/invoke-history easier
# eg: "r 4" will re-run the command that has [4]: in the prompt
$nextCommandId = (Get-History -count 1).Id + 1

# Output prompt string
# If there's an error, set the prompt foreground to "Red", otherwise, "Yellow"
if($err) { $fg = "Red" } else { $fg = "Yellow" }

# Notice: no angle brackets, makes it easy to paste my buffer to the web
Write-Host "[${Nesting}${nextCommandId}${Stack}]:" -NoNewLine -Fore $fg

return " "
}
The easiest way to do this is: 1. In PS type “$profile” this will show you the location of the current active profile 2. Open that file in notepad and paste the function above into it 3. In PS type “.$profile” to reload the altered profile