How does this script for naming iTerm tabs work?

Question

I'm trying to name my iTerm tabs and found this link. Here is the pertinent part of the guy's post:

I wrote a simple script, which I call “nametab”, which allows you to name the tab you are in from the command line. You just type something like:

$ nametab New tab name

If you’d like to use this yourself, here is the code:

#!/bin/bash

# A simple script which will name a tab in iTerm
# usage:
# $ nametab New tab name

echo -ne "\033]0;"$@"\007"

I have created a directory $HOME/dev/bash_scripts and placed a file in that directory called nametab.sh. I then switched to that directory and ran the command

chmod u+x nametab.sh

But when I try to name my current tab in iTerm by typing nametab.sh New tab hellooooo, nothing happens. I also tried nametab.sh hellooooo, and nothing happens.

Can you help me understand what I don't understand?

---

Update:

echo TERM=$TERM

returns

TERM=xterm-256color

and

echo $PATH

returns

.:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:~/dev/bash_scripts

and

cat ~/dev/bash_scripts/nametab.sh

returns

#!/bin/bash

# A simple script which will name a tab in iTerm
# usage:
# $ nametab NewTabName

echo "trying to rename the current tab to $@"
echo -ne "\033]0;"$@"\007"
echo "finished"

and

nametab.sh hellooooo

returns

trying to rename the current tab to helloooo
finished

but the tab name always stays the same.

Incidentally, the tab name reads

MindRoot (bash)

I am running iTerm2. I try to do all my bash shell configuration in /etc/bashrc. This way I get the same bash terminal behavior regardless of which user account I am logged in on. The contents of /etc/bashrc is

# System-wide .bashrc file for interactive bash(1) shells.
if [ -z "$PS1" ]; then
   return
fi

#PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '
# Make bash check its window size after a process completes
shopt -s checkwinsize

# ALL OF THE BELOW ADDED BY DEONOMO ON 2011-04-25

# custom prompt
PROMPT_HOSTNAME='MindRoot' 
PROMPT_COLOR='0;35m'

# If I am root, set the prompt to bright red
if [ ${UID} -eq 0 ]; then
PROMPT_COLOR='1;31m'
fi

PS1='\[\e]1;${PROMPT_HOSTNAME}\a\e]2;${PROMPT_HOSTNAME}:${PWD}\a\
\e[${PROMPT_COLOR}\]\
[\u@${PROMPT_HOSTNAME} \w]\n \#\$ \
\[\e[m\]'

#PS1="\e[0;45m\w:$ "

# added by Deonomo on 2011/09/12 in order to have textmate work as default editor
export EDITOR='mate -w'

# added by Deonomo on 2012-01-11 in order to start a dev/bash_scripts directory
export PATH="$PATH:~/dev/bash_scripts"

Answer 1

rename_tab () {
    TEXT=$1
    export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${TEXT}\007"'
}

This is a function. You can add it to your ~/.bashrc (or something similar, like a ~/.bash_profile). To rename the tabs, you can then do this:

$ rename_tab 'NEW NAME HERE'

Answer 2

I was having your same problem - but I saw the tab name briefly flash before going to back to what it was: the shell and the cwd. Turns out I had an environment variable changing the tab name on every shell command, so this fixed it for me:

export PROMPT_COMMAND=''

Now: echo -e "\033];MY_NEW_TITLE\007"

..works just fine and persists.

Answer 3

If you want to have an alias for changing the tab name, you can actually do it by defining a function in your .profile/.bashrc file like this:

function renametab () {
    echo -ne "\033]0;"$@"\007"
}