What does this "(base)" mean in my terminal prompt?

Question

(base) fedaa@fedaa-Satellite-L50-B:~$ cd molecules/

What does this (base) mean in my terminal prompt?

I just found it and I have no idea what it refers to.

Answer 1

1. It is most likely that the last program or script that you invoked didn't correctly ended with a new line character.

   Here is a simple example:

   #!/bin/bash
   printf "test"
   

   Copy this content into your editor and save it as a file called test.sh

   Then make it an executable

   chmod 755 test.sh
   

   and invoke it with

   ./test.sh
   

   The output will be

   fedaa@fedaa-Satellite-L50-B:~$./test.sh
   test fedaa@fedaa-Satellite-L50-B:~$
   

   If you add a \n (new line character)

   #!/bin/bash
   printf "who\n"
   

   the result will be

   fedaa@fedaa-Satellite-L50-B:~$./test.sh
   test
   fedaa@fedaa-Satellite-L50-B:~$
   

2. In case you are using anaconda or the conda environment, look at this link

   https://conda.io/docs/user-guide/getting-started.html

   To see a list of all your environments, type:

   conda info --envs
   

   A list of environments appears, similar to the following:

   conda environments:
   
       base           /home/username/Anaconda3
       snowflakes   * /home/username/Anaconda3/envs/snowflakes
   

   In that case (base) marks you are using the default anaconda environment.

   To deactivate the environment, type

    source deactivate
   

   After recent changes in the functioning of conda package manager , the use of "source deactivate " is being depreciated and support for this command might be ended.

   However

   conda deactivate
   

   is more suitable to be used.

   In newer anaconda releases simply type this conda command in your shell:

    conda config --set auto_activate_base False