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Old 01-22-2004, 11:07 AM   #1
mikshaw
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$TERM variable change, or other solution?


This seems like it might end up being a lengthy post, but I'll try to be as brief as possible without being too vague....

My situation is as follows:
I have a weird PS1, something I was messing around with for a while just to make it funky. It has many escaped characters (line characters), which usually display fine...except when I use Midnight Commander. Only the last few characters display, and they are not escaped, so it's something like 0qm(B> or something similar.

I've tried to find a solution to this, and so far the best option I've found is to change the term name of aterm when it launches mc, "aterm -tn vt220 -e mc", and place something like this in ~/.bashrc:
Code:
if [ $TERM = vt220 ]; then
    PS1='\@ \u > '
else
    PS1='<very long string of characters>'
fi
This seems to work ok in X, since all my other terminal apps automatically reset $TERM to "xterm". However, when I'm working in tty, the $TERM variable remains "vt220" until I manually return it to "linux".

I have 3 questions relating to this:

1) Am I likely to run into trouble (apps not running properly, etc) by leaving $TERM=vt220 while I'm in tty?

2) Is there another term name that might be more appropriate? Linux doesn't work properly...in X mc displays its borders all funky, and in tty it would display the shortened PS1 all the time (my $TERM is already "linux" in tty).

3) Is there an altogether better solution to this? By "this" I mean finding out whether mc is the application which is currently being opened, and setting PS1 accordingly.


I'm running SuSE 9, kernel 2.4.21-99, bash 2.05b, and generally aterm in X

Thanks for any help.
 
Old 01-22-2004, 11:57 AM   #2
Tinkster
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Have a look at
man bash

The difference is that .bashrc is for non-login
shells, but the full-screen terminals are LOGIN
shells ... if you want the setting changed there
just source the .bashrc from .bash_login.


Cheers,
Tink
 
Old 01-22-2004, 05:38 PM   #3
mikshaw
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I have .bashrc sourced from .bash_profile, so the changes are made in the login shells. I'm just concerned if it may cause problems, or I may lose some functionality, by switching to a different $TERM. I did lose the ability to select mc menu items with the mouse, but I kinda prefer it that way.
 
Old 01-22-2004, 08:32 PM   #4
Tinkster
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You mean one can use a mouse with mc? :D


Cheers,
Tink
 
Old 01-22-2004, 09:08 PM   #5
mikshaw
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Yeah.....if it's in X on a terminal that supports mouse action. I started out using mc in eterm, then when I switched to aterm I got confused...when I'd click on mc to focus it, I'd get drop-down menus or else select whatever file was under the cursor. I prefer it without the mouse support.

So far it seems to cause absolutely no trouble in X to be switching the term variable every time I open mc, but I haven't spent much time in a tty today to see if there's an issue there.
 
  


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