Bash Prompt – Backspace Deletes Prompt Issue

bashprompt

I recently modified my Bash prompt via the $PS1 variable so that I could have color. It is in my .bashrc file:

PS1="\\[\e[0;32m[\h::\W] >>\e[m "

Now if I type something and then have to backspace to clear it the entire prompt disappears. If I hit enter a new one shows up.

Looking at this question regarding the same issue it would appear that I am missing a closing bracket. I don't know where it would go, though.

Best Answer

At first I thought that the backslashes would self-escape within the double-quotes and that was the problem, but, on second-thought, "\\[" is equivalent to '\[' so this is not the case - it would have worked that way.

But the real problem was that readline did not know how many characters had been drawn to the screen and how many were intercepted as terminal escapes. In fact, it likely thought no prompt had been printed at all because your prompt consisted of what was essentially an open-quoted string.

So, as I noted in the comment, you needed to close the sequence. The \[ means begin non-printing escape sequence in the prompt - it's so readline can keep track of how many chars are drawn on the screen. You also need to end it like:

PS1='\[non-printing terminal escapes here\]' 

man bash 2>/dev/null | grep '^ *\\\[' -A5

\[     begin  a  sequence  of   non-printing
       characters,  which  could  be used to
       embed  a  terminal  control  sequence
       into the prompt
\]     end  a sequence of non-printing char‐
       acters

0.5a - Cyan Tumbleweed Plains

The earlier implementations provided with the question rely on a sequence of commands which uses tr and a set of single byte characters. As was explained in this Q&A, the utility cannot process multibyte characters such as Unicode. But leveraging those characters was quite essential in achieving the desired effect. A "solution" was provided which allows to mix the single byte and multi byte chars in a single stream for rendering. The solution developed there is presented and customized here:

Z1=$(echo -en '\xe2\x97\x98') #◘ 1
Z2=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x9a') #╚ 2
Z3=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x9c') #╜ 3
Z4=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x9d') #╝ 4
Z5=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x9e') #╞ 5
Z6=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x9f') #╟ 6
Z7=$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x91') #░ 7
Z8=$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x92') #▒ 8
Z9=$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x93') #▓ 9
N1=$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\x80') #─ a
N2=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x92') #╒ b
N3=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\x97') #╗ c
N4=$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\xb6') #▶d
N5=$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\xbc') #┼ e
N6=$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\xa4') #┤ f
N7=$(echo -en '\xe2\x95\xa1') #╡ g
Z11="$(tr -dc '123456789a' < /dev/urandom | head -c 1)" //Z11 to Z13 not
Z12="$(tr -dc '123456789a' < /dev/urandom | head -c 1)" // used here (see
Z13="$(tr -dc '123456789a' < /dev/urandom | head -c 1)" //link)

echo -en $(tr -dcs ' ;",15bdef' ' ' < /dev/urandom | head -c $(echo -en "$[$(tput cols) * $(tput lines)]") | sed -e "s/1/$(echo -en "\033[0;36m$Z1\033[0m")/g" -e "s/5/$(echo -en "\033[0;32m$Z5\033[0m")/g" -e "s/b/$(echo -en "\033[1;36m$N2\033[0m")/g" -e "s/d/$(echo -en "\033[1;36m$N4\033[0m")/g" -e "s/e/$(echo -en "\033[0;32m$N5\033[1;32m")/g" -e "s/f/$(echo -en "\033[0;36m$N7\033[1;32m")/g"); tput cup 1
                 ^set^+^chars^ to implement from pool - here 1,5,b,d,e,f... so_________________________^add the appropriate sed subprocessing units for implemented chars i.e. first one we replace "1" with the value of $Z1 and apply color at the same time, then all the chars move down the pipe to all required blocks - we selected to implement 6 chars here so we have 6 sed blocks. 

[N.B. To remove the blank space from the pattern, remove it from both sets: tr -dcs ';",15bdef' '']

PS1="\[\033[1;36m\] $(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x91')$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x92')$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x93')[\t]$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x93')$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x92')$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\x91') \[\033[7;36m\]$(echo -en '\xe2\x97\x98')$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\xbc')$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\x80')\W$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\x80')\[\033[0;36m\]$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\x80')$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\x80')$(echo -en '\xe2\x94\x80')@$(echo -en '\xe2\x96\xb6')\[\033[0;36m\]"

PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -en '\033[0;36m$(tr -dc '=' < /dev/urandom | head -c $(tput cols))\n\033[01;46m$(tr -dc '~' < /dev/urandom | head -c $(tput cols))\033[0;36m$(tr -dc '=' < /dev/urandom | head -c $(tput cols))'$(tput cuu 2)"

This implementation no longer renders per line but rather prints the whole sequence in one shot at the end of the sed processing. This appears only at login once or generally when bash is launched. Here is one such random pattern at launch (we can see two shades of green and two shades of cyan):

enter image description here

The screens show the result in the standard linux terminal and it works in xterm too. I've used some of those new pattern chars in the PS1 prompt whereas the PROMPT_COMMAND just takes care of the active line and its 2 line padding which use 1 byte chars.

The pattern also matches well my current distribution which calls archbey in .bashrc.:

enter image description here

It's in for Christmas! Cheers people :)

Bash autocompletion for an environment variable holding a directory name

shopt -s direxpand

will help, there will be no space so you can continue typing but it will replace the enviroment variable with its content.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Customizing Terminal Background with ASCII Patterns – How to Guide

0.5a - Cyan Tumbleweed Plains

Bash autocompletion for an environment variable holding a directory name

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