Linux: coloring bash prompt will break carriage return
10,873
Solution 1
You must wrap all escape sequences between \[
and \]
in order for 'readline' to correctly calculate the prompt's visible length. Without them, 'readline' thinks the prompt is longer than it is, and doesn't know when the text reaches the margin.
PS1="\[\e[;31m\][\u@\h \W]\$ \[\e[m\]"
Solution 2
the [ and ] tip worked on bash on OS X 10.8.2 too.
I use:
PS1="[\e[0;37m\W\$(git branch 2>/dev/null | grep -e '* ' | sed 's/^..(.*)/{\1}/') \$ \e[m ]"
which shows me my current git branch in use.
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Author by
Abonec
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Abonec almost 2 years
When I try to colorize the
bash
prompt like this:export PS1="\e[0;31m[\u@\h \W]\$ \e[m "
it breaks the carriage return (instead of going to a new line when line is full, it starts in the same line and erases the input text).
If I remove the color sequence it works fine.
I use Ubuntu 11.10 and terminal (guake has the same bug too).
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Matteo over 12 yearsStrange. It works w/o any problem on RedHat 5 and Mac OS X
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user1686 over 12 yearspossible duplicate of PS1 problem, cmd is looping
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osirisgothra over 11 yearsThanks a ton!! i was trying to find some documentation on it in the official docs but couldnt -- the 'stock' color prompt does employ this 'trick' and I had a hard time at first figuring out what exactly it was for, so thanks for clearing that up --- btw i did actually find the documentation source in 'man readline 3' around line 684 and it says that this is actually called 'skip-csi-sequence' for those who want to know where the documentation on this is. I don't think i would have found it without you pointing me to readline(3) even though i knew about it before-failed to make the connection.
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rafak about 11 yearsDo you know about "__git_ps1" ?
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stonefruit about 11 yearsnopes. what magical thing will it do?
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Max Howell over 10 yearsWhat does "wrap" mean? Do you mean wrap the whole thing IN a
\[
,\]
? I guess so, but it doesn't seem to be working for me. -
user1686 almost 10 years@osirisgothra: The documentation is actually talking about a different thing –
skip-csi-sequence
is meant to suppress input sequences generated by special keys. -
Enrico about 8 years@MaxHowell you have to wrap each
\e[xxm
sequence, not the whole string. -
IC_ about 6 yearsThanks. In my case I just replaced
\e[39m
with\[\e[;39m\]
and it works fine -
user1686 about 6 yearsNote that
\e[;39m
expands to\e[0;39m
which means "reset all formatting, then set color to 39". It's good in prompts, but it is not in any way related to my post about\[ \]
. -
Rudolf Adamkovic about 3 yearsThank you so much. I was going crazy debugging this...