Debian Bash Prompt – Fixing Spurious @ Symbol at Start

bashpromptreadline

As of late, and without my deliberately doing anything to make it happen, my Bash prompt has an at sign (i.e. @) prepended to it. This did not previously happen. Nor can I see anything in my ~/.bashrc that seems as though it ought to be making this happen.

This is on Debian Jessie GNU/Linux, using GNU Bash.

For example, my current Bash sessions look like this:

@sampablokuper@debianbox:~$ python3
Python 3.4.2 (default, Oct  8 2014, 13:14:40) 
[GCC 4.9.1] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
@>>> 1+2
3
@>>> exit()
@sampablokuper@debianbox:~$ 

whereas originally, they would have looked like this:

sampablokuper@debianbox:~$ python3
Python 3.4.2 (default, Oct  8 2014, 13:14:40) 
[GCC 4.9.1] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 1+2
3
>>> exit()
sampablokuper@debianbox:~$ 

Here are all the lines from my ~/.bashrc that appear to in any way relate to the Bash prompt:

# set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below)
if [ -z "${debian_chroot:-}" ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then
    debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot)
fi

# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in
    xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac

# uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned
# off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window
# should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt
#force_color_prompt=yes

if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then
    if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then
        # We have color support; assume it's compliant with Ecma-48
        # (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such
        # a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.)
        color_prompt=yes
    else
        color_prompt=
    fi
fi

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

How can I get my Bash prompt to appear as it did originally?

Best Answer

Based on a meta discussion, I'm copying @steeldriver's perfectly good AU answer here:


You appear to have configured readline to enable edit mode indication. From 8.3.1 Readline Init File Syntax of the Bash Reference Manual:

show-mode-in-prompt (Off)
       If set to On, add a character to the  beginning  of  the  prompt
       indicating  the  editing  mode:  emacs (@), vi command (:) or vi
       insertion (+).

You should be able to disable it in the current shell using

bind 'set show-mode-in-prompt off'

To disable it persistently, you will need to find where it is getting set, possibly your ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc files.

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