Linebreak before first prompt in restarted shell

If HOMETOWN_LINEBREAK_BEFORE_PROMPT (default: 1) is non-zero, a blank line will be added before every prompt.

[first prompt] … # preceded by extraneous line break

[second prompt] …

[third prompt] …

If HOMETOWN_SET_PSVAR (default: 1) and HOMETOWN_NO_LINEBREAK_BEFORE_FIRST_PROMPT (default: 1) are also non-zero, the first prompt of each session will not have a blank line before it.

[first prompt] # no extraneous line break

[second prompt]

[third prompt]

That’s nice when opening a new terminal: it won’t start with extraneous blank line.

The downside is that if you start a fresh session in an open terminal, for example by running exec zsh, the new session’s first prompt won’t have a blank link above it.

[first prompt] # no extraneous line break

[second prompt] exec zsh
[new session's first prompt] # probably want a preceding line break

Hometown does not have a built-in way around this.

Here’s what I do. It works for me. It probably has some rough edge cases. If you only run exec on the command line to run exec zsh, it may work for you too:

Alias exec such that exec zsh adds a blank line:

# .zshrc

newline_before_exec_zsh {
  if [[ $1 == 'zsh' ]]; then
    printf '\n'
  fi

  'builtin' 'exec' $*
}

alias exec=newline_before_exec_zsh

[first prompt] # no extraneous line break

[second prompt] exec zsh

[new session's first prompt] # preceding line break