I like to have a pretty obvious indication of the success of failure of any commands I might have run. To accomplish this I add several color coding shortcuts to my .bash_profile :

RED='\033[0;31m' GREEN='\033[0;32m' BLUE='\033[0;34m' NOFORMAT='\033[m' #return code visualization RVAL='$(RET=$?; if [ $RET -eq 0 ]; then echo -ne "$GREEN"; else echo -ne "$RED"; fi; echo -ne "$RET")'

Using those I can make a relatively simple $PS1 that I add to the end of my .bash_profile :

# prompt export PS1="$BLUE\t $NOFORMAT\h $BLUE\w $RVAL\r

\\\$ "

That gives me a prompt that looks like this for root after a successful command:

11:57:24 MyBox /etc 0

# ▋

or like this for a normal user after a failed command ( CTRL-C in this case):

11:57:27 MyBox ~/git 0

$ ▋