MacOS – Unable to fully maximize Terminal window

Terminals have a fixed character width and height, and most (all?) terminal application programs make the window an even multiple of that size (then add the window title, some margin around the sides, etc.), so there will never be a partial row or column visible.

They could theoretically add more margin at the right/bottom of the window when the window is zoomed out, but then your question might merely be replaced with someone else asking “Why is there always some blank space at the window edge when the window is zoomed?”.

And what should happen to the window if you resize or show/hide the Dock (for example) such that the window is no longer the same dimensions as it would be if you zoomed it again to fit the new display area? When you Zoom a window, it isn’t placed into a “zoomed” state, it’s just resized to the current available display area at the time you Zoom it. If the available display area changes and you haven’t asked it to Zoom again, then what?

Not that these aren’t solvable, but there are a number of dynamic behaviors to consider, and terminal applications typically keep things simple.

Note that Mac OS X Lion “Full Screen” is an actual state that the window is in and Terminal always fits the window to the size of the display, updating when the display size changes, and adds margins as mentioned above. The size of the Dock, for example, is ignored.

ok, I've found the problem. it was tricky and several different results led to it. but it always wise to figure out our mistakes, so here was mine:

1. i used .bash_profile file with some settings for convenient use (like aliases, coloring, etc.). i just copied that file from my friend and never looked at it thoroughly, however should done this. there are some bash functions which adds to the variable PROMPT_COMMAND the name of current git branch, so it is convenient when you make cd in this folder, the branch is shown automatically in green color near ~ sign, like this: "~master". you can find this in .bash_profile as prompt_func and parse_git_branch functions. they are using git command

2. this profile file always worked well. but at some point (today) it stopped. so i just pulled my bash history and after some thorough exploration and thinking have found the problem. here is the excerpt of output from history:

437 curl -s -O http://github-media-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/osx/git-credential-osxkeychain
438 chmod u+x git-credential-osxkeychain
439 sudo mv git-credential-osxkeychain `which git`

strange command

sudo mv git-credential-osxkeychain `which git`

was intended to move file git-credential-osxkeychain to the directory, where git resides (which git), for my system it is /usr/bin/git. but what actually was made is that this file was moved to the directory /usr/bin with the name git and the directory with the git itself was just overwritten by that file, e.d. gone!! so now, coming back to the scripts functions in .bash_profile which is using git, everything looks simple and obvious - there is no git, but the file named git (which is executable btw - utility for setting up git credentials) and functions use this utility thinking that it is git itself.

therefore now, solution for me is to restore git installation and rename git file back to git-credential-osxkeychain

resume - never write bash code in one-line unless you clearly understand what will bring each statement of it to the results

thanks for all who took part in this.