multi-line command doesn't wrap correctly

spiffytech · 03-28-2006, 04:02 PM

I decided to change the default prompt values for Bash on my CentOS4 SSH terminal. I edited /etc/bashrc to use

PS1="\e[31;1m\] \n\n \w \! \u@\h \A \d\n\n>>> \e[0m"

Since doing this, multi-line Bash commands fail to wrap correctly. Instead of moving to a new line, the second line overwrites the first line, which is a mess to read and causes many other problems with the wraping when you try to do things like delete characters and such. How should I go about fixing this?

unSpawn · 03-28-2006, 04:54 PM

I decided to change the default prompt (..) How should I go about fixing this?
1. Undo
2. Read the http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/
3. Retry, but now *making* educated guesses :-]

BTW, don't post duplicate threads. If you need help with a thread, like changing the title, just ask this forums moderators.

nakko · 12-28-2008, 06:18 PM

One thing I noticed that the link referred to by spiffytech was that in their "problems" section they omit this helpful tidbit, which is of particular use to me and (well, every frickin' body nowadays basically) others who use terminals in resize-able windows like PuTTY or Terminal.app or Gnome term, etc etc.

Add this to your /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile or wherever it needs to go:
shopt -s checkwinsize

Worked for me, since my problem was not related to what I had in my PS1= line.