Bash: Hacking PROMPT_DIRTRIMmed path

bash (as some other shells) has one cute feature I used a long time:

PROMPT_DIRTRIM
If set to a number greater than zero, the value is used as the number of trailing directory components to retain when expanding the \w and \W prompt string escapes. Characters removed are replaced with an ellipsis.

Since ages konsole supports UTF-8 characters and they are used in my smart bash prompt. I’ve just wanted to check how easy it will be to replace the default '...' text w/ a single unicode character '…'. It took about 30 seconds to find out that unfortunately, bash have no option to set my own text instead of default. So I decided to make an “ugly hack” ;-)

diff -ub -r bash-4.2.org/general.c bash-4.2/general.c
--- bash-4.2.org/general.c  2010-12-12 23:06:27.000000000 +0300
+++ bash-4.2/general.c  2014-02-02 21:25:00.000000000 +0400
@@ -761,9 +761,9 @@
   if (nlen <= 3)
     return name;
 
-  *nbeg++ = '.';
-  *nbeg++ = '.';
-  *nbeg++ = '.';
+  *nbeg++ = '\xe2';
+  *nbeg++ = '\x80';
+  *nbeg++ = '\xa6';
 
   nlen = nend - ntail;
   memcpy (nbeg, ntail, nlen);

\xe2\xe80\xa6 is UTF-8 code for …

Thanks to my autopatch hook it is easy to build and install my hacked version to see a result …

The proper (not hackish) way should be:

1. get a value of PROMPT_DIRTRIM_TEXT if any, otherwise use default '...' string
2. send a patch back to upstream

… maybe later ;-)