From
here...My old 3.x shell startup looks like this:
echo "*e[>1m*e[32;41m*e[0;0H*e[J"
prompt "*n*e[>1m*e[33;41m*e[1m%N/%R.*e[30;41m%S>*e[0m*e[32;41m "
alias CLS "echo *"*E[0;0H*E[J*""
echo "AmigaOS $OS. Workbench (Disk) $Workbench, Kickstart (ROM) $Kickstart*n"
date
echo "*nMemory*n"
avail
The first line simply clears the screen so there's as little delay as possible. The line that really matters is the "prompt" line.
As Cass explains above, each of the "*[" introduces an escape sequence. To elaborate:
*e[>
1m
Floods the console background with pen 1 (black)
*e[3
2;4
1m
sets the character colour to pen 2 (white) and the character cell colour to pen 1 (black).
Also, you can only use pens 0-9 I think. Anyhow, the other escape sequences in my prompt simply format it to show the process/return value in one colour and the path in another, as well as making them bold.