Mac Terminal.app annoying bug - How to fix it?

Question

Video showing the problem: http://www.mentaframework.org/download/TerminalBug.mov

When I am typing on the Terminal.app and reach the end of the line, the next line starts on top of the first line, overwriting everything. Then if I use the delete key everything messes up and disappears.

I did a ssh in the same terminal to a different host and it worked fine, so can it be a problem with my shell configuration?

Watch the movie to see what happens:

Thanks,

-Sergio

Answer 1

You need to mark the escape codes in your PS1 variable that are setting up your coloured prompt. The shell needs to know they're not printable and then it will calculate your line wrap properly.

Here's a link to an explanation and some examples:

http://www.artemfrolov.com/articles/coloured-bash-prompt

The quick tip:

\[     begins a sequence of non-printing characters
\]     ends a sequence of non-printing characters

Answer 2

http://www.artemfrolov.com/articles/coloured-bash-prompt is currently blank (as in, visit in Chrome/Firefox/Opera and see just whitespace, no content). So after studying the example here, am finding that converting:

export PS1='\e[0;32m\u@\h\e[m \D{%b %d} \t $ '

which breaks, to

export PS1='\[\e[0;32m\]\u@\h\[\e[m\] \D{%b %d} \t $ '

seems to work for me (as an additional, specific example).

Separately, and slightly off-topic, but useful (for at least my reference): to upgrade the above with helpful "compressed path" and bolded-green user@host in the prompt:

export MYPS='$(echo -n "${PWD/#$HOME/~}" | awk -F "/" '"'"'{if (length($0) > 14) { if (NF>4) print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $(NF-1) "/" $NF; else if (NF>3) print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $NF; else print $1 "/.../" $NF; } else print $0;}'"'"')'
export PS1='\[\e[1;32m\]\u@\h\[\e[m\] \D{%b %d} \t $(eval "echo ${MYPS}")$ '

** Edit **: this PS1 assignment (the 2nd line), imo, is much easier to read:

export MYPS='$(echo -n "${PWD/#$HOME/~}" | awk -F "/" '"'"'{if (length($0) > 14) { if (NF>4) print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $(NF-1) "/" $NF; else if (NF>3) print $1 "/" $2 "/.../" $NF; else print $1 "/.../" $NF; } else print $0;}'"'"')'
export PS1='$USER@\[$(tput bold)\]$(hostname -s)\[$(tput sgr0)\] \D{%b %d} \t $(eval "echo ${MYPS}")$ '