I am trying to fix my bash prompt to the following:
hostname:username hh:mm /current/path $
it worked allright using the following in my bashrc
or at least, so I thought. As it happens ,when I type a very long command line (one that wraps the line), the next line overwrites the first one (like a carriage return with no linefeed in terminal terminology). I think the problem might be due to the nonprintable characters in the prompt that somehow screws up the terminal (I have tried different terminals including xterm, rxvt, gnome-terminal, konsole, same result).
This must be a trivial problem, but I can't seem to solve it. I really want a boldface hostname because I've been using that for several years (different shell, different OS) and I use a lot of different machines and it's too easy to get the ssh sessions mixed up otherwise.

Hehehe ... was working on this today myself..

You need to "escape" the entire command so that it isn't counted in the number of characters in a line..

A better explanation is at.. http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO...NPRINTINGCHARS

Thank you for that link! Solved my problem right away. The correct prompt to use was

Actually, you need some extra bits for it..
It needs an escaped e[0m at the end to reset any colors/bold/etc..
Try..
export PS1="\[\e[0;1m\]\h\[\e[0;0m\]:\u \A \w \$ \[\033[0m\]"

It is explained quite quickly earlier why to escape any "non-printing" characters and reset at the end of the line.

If you plan to use this in your .bashrc file, don't use the export command, just the PS1 definition..
I use
PS1='\[\033[1;37;40m\]\u\[\033[1;33m\]@\[\033[1;33m\]\h\[\033[1;37m\]\w\[\033[1;33m\]\$ \[\033[0m\]'
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
for an xterm with a white background..

Actually, that is not needed in my case, but thanks anyway.