Everybody has their own idea of what the perfect prompt in PowerShell consists of. My prompt is pretty boring, but it’s got one pretty unique feature – my prompt function doubles as a useful command!

You see, a lot of times I wind up in deep directories of solution and project folders in Visual Studio and I wind up with a prompt that barely fits on one line, or even worse, wraps. In this cases, I often only care about having a vague idea of where I am. 

# sometimes I only want a little information about where I am.
C:\Users\Josh Einstein\Documents\Visual Studio\Projects> Prompt -Minimize

# sometimes I don't care at all
PS Projects> Prompt -Hide

# if I need to bring it back to the way it was, I can just do this.
PS> Prompt -Show
C:\Users\Josh Einstein\Documents\Visual Studio\Projects>

This has really come in handy for me and it’s something you could easily do with a separate script or function in your profile. But I figured, hey the prompt function is already there right? What’s it gonna hurt if I add a few parameters to it? 

##############################################################################
#.SYNOPSIS
# The all-important Prompt function called by PowerShell in order to display
# the prompt, with an added twist using the built-in parameters.
#
#.DESCRIPTION
# Customizing the prompt is common in PowerShell, but this function adds some
# parameters to the function that enable some dynamic behavior. These
# parameters will not affect the way PowerShell calls the function, but they
# allow you to minimize or hide the prompt by passing switches.
#
#.PARAMETER Minimize
# Shrinks the prompt so that it shows only the leaf portion of the current
# provider path. Restore it using the -Show parameter.
#
#.PARAMETER Hide
# Sets the prompt to an ultra-compact mode, displaying only an indicator,
# and no information about the current location.
#
#.PARAMETER Show
# Restores the prompt to it's default mode which displays the full location
# of the current provider path.
#
#.LINK
# about_prompts
#
#.EXAMPLE
# Prompt -Minimize
# Prompt -Hide
# Prompt -Show
##############################################################################
function Prompt {

    [CmdletBinding(DefaultParameterSetName='Prompt')]
    param ( 

        [Parameter(ParameterSetName='Minimize')]
        [Switch] $Minimize,

        [Parameter(ParameterSetName='Hide')]
        [Switch] $Hide,

        [Parameter(ParameterSetName='Show')]
        [Switch] $Show

    )

    switch ( $PSCmdlet.ParameterSetName ) {
        Minimize { $Global:PromptVisibility = 'Minimized' }
        Hide     { $Global:PromptVisibility = 'Hidden' }
        Show     { $Global:PromptVisibility = 'Default' }
        Prompt   {
            switch ( $PromptVisibility ) {
                Minimized { "PS $(Split-Path $PWD -Leaf)> " }
                Hidden    { "PS> " }
                Default   { "$PWD> " }
            }
        }
    }

}