Ubuntu – Custom bash prompt is buggy

bashcommand lineprompt

I followed some articles on how to change the prompt, I've got the result I was looking for, but when the cursor reach the end of the screen it doesn't go new line and tab completion it's strange.

# ~/.bashrc

# colorful, with time, history id and path (also in window title)
export PS1="\[\e]0;\w\a\]\e[1;36m\t-\! - \w>\e[m "

Anybody have got a clue on what am I doing wrong?

Best Answer

The colour setting escape sequences need to be enclosed in \[ and \] in order to tell bash readline that they don't contribute to the length of the line. This should do it:

PS1="\[\e]0;\w\a\e[1;36m\]\t-\! - \w>\[\e[m\] "

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Ubuntu – PS1 problem, messing up CLI

That's because bash thinks the prompt is longer than it is. The escape sequence \e[0;31m for instance, gets sucked up by the terminal, which in turn turns the following text red, but bash doesn't know that. So, you have to tell bash that that sequence of characters should not be counted in the prompt's length, and you do that by enclosing it in \[ \]. I also recommend using tput instead of hardcoding terminal escape sequences.

red=$(tput setaf 1)
reset=$(tput sgr0)
PS1='\[$red\][\W]\$\[$reset\] '

See BashFAQ 53 and Terminal codes (ANSI/VT100) introduction for more.

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It looks like kitty's shell is /bin/sh. This is a shell that's intended for scripting, it doesn't support fancy prompts, completion, command line edition and other interactive features. Change kitty's shell to /bin/bash:

chsh -s /bin/bash kitty

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