How to add color to your bash prompt without screwing up long commands?

MisterSnrub · 11-01-2014, 03:51 PM

Normally my PS1 in bash is set as the following:

Code:

[mrsnrub@my-test-site ~]$ echo $PS1
[\u@\h \W]\$

With this normal setting I can run very long commands, like the following:

Code:

[mrsnrub@my-test-site ~]$ echo "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,"
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,

However, if I change PS1 to yellow text, like so:

Code:

[mrsnrub@my-test-site ~]$ export PS1="\e[1,33m[\u@\h: \W]\$ \e[m"

...I can no longer run very long commands:

As soon as the screen reaches what should be a line break, the text doesn't break, and the cursor overwrites the beginning of the same line:

Code:

 Tranquilmy-test-site ~]$ echo "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic

Why does this happen when all I'm doing is changing the color of the prompt?

rknichols · 11-01-2014, 07:02 PM

When your prompt string contains what would normally be printing characters that are actually part of an escape sequence, you need to bracket that portion of the string with the 2-character sequences \[ and \] to tell the shell that those characters do not advance the cursor position.

Code:

export PS1="\[\e[1;33m\][\u@\h: \W]\$ \[\e[m\]"

MisterSnrub · 11-02-2014, 09:36 AM

Perfect!! Thank you so much!!

GazL · 11-03-2014, 10:22 AM

If you regularly resize your terminal windows, you might want to also add: shopt -s checkwinsize to your .bashrc. as that can also help bash to keep track of how long the terminal line is.