Terminal input does not start new line

Question

I have a random problem which I personally find quite irritating. I use the terminal alot and have installed a theme and even toyed around with what is displayed on the prompt. However if I write a particularly line of text it does not start a new line in the terminal instead it will begin overwriting what is displayed on the screen in the current terminal line. I wondered if anyone knew a way to solve this so that it does show a new line and all input would be visible.

PS1 value

export PS1="\r\n\e[1;32mdave:\w $\e[0;37m "

What is the value of your customize PS1 variable?

janos
– janos

2013-07-14 09:59:14 +00:00
Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 9:59 — janos
– janos, Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 9:59
export PS1="\r\n\e[1;32mdave:\w $\e[0;37m "

David
– David

2013-07-14 10:00:27 +00:00
Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 10:00 — David
– David, Commented Jul 14, 2013 at 10:00

janos · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-14 10:14:27Z

8

Well, thanks to the post by @Joni, I believe the solution is:

PS1="\r\n\[\e[1;32m\]dave:\w $\[\e[0;37m\] "

That is, here the color codes \e[1;32m and \e[0;37m are enclosed within \[ and \], as @Joni suggested they should be.

answered Jul 14, 2013 at 10:14

janos

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2 Comments

Daniel Schütte Over a year ago

An error I make all the time when modifying my prompt. Thanks!

dtlam26 Over a year ago

awesome sir! :D

Joni · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-14 10:02:32Z

Non printing characters, like escape codes for color, have to be surrounded with \[ and \] so that bash knows to exclude them when calculating the length of the line.

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/nonprintingchars.html

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