I modified my prompt in my .bashrc file using the following command:
PS1='\[$(tput bold)\e[1;34m\w\e[m$ '
Now my prompt shows the current directory in bold blue color followed by the $ sign. On a new prompt, if no other text has been entered, I press the delete key nothing happens.
However, if I enter any text, say cd, delete that and then press the delete key once more, it will delete my prompt. How can I change my .bashrc file so my prompt can never be deleted?
Bash is confused about how long your prompt actually is. You can tell bash by enclosing non-printable parts of the prompt with backslash-brackets: \[....\].
Your prompt, however only contains the opening bracket, making bash believe that the prompt is very short, so it happily removes almost all of it in some situations. A proper use of the bracketing would look like this:
PS1='\[$(tput bold)\e[1;34m\]\w\[\e[m\]$ '
That is, everything is in backslash-bracket except the working directory and the dollar sign, because those are the only parts that actually consume space on the terminal screen.
Related
Note: I am running Mac OS X Sierra but this problem occurs on Ubuntu also.
I have customised the terminal prompt as such:
export PS1="\n\[\033[1;31m\]\u 🖖 \[\033[1;32m\]# \[\033[1;32m\]\h \[\033[0;35m\]in \[\033[0;36m\]\w\n\[\033[0;34m\]> \[\033[1;37m\] \e[0m"
Note that I have put a newline at the end, so I start typing commands on a new line after the >. I have done this on a number of machines, and I've noticed that whenever I add the newline, the terminal behaves weirdly.
By weirdly, the exact behaviour I refer to is this (this includes the steps to replicate the error if you use the PS1 value I have mentioned):
Access older commands by pressing the up arrow key.
When I encounter a command in the history which consists of more than 1 word, and the first word is is more than 4 characters long, then the first 4 characters of the word 'stick' to the initial part of the prompt.
This 'sticky part' cannot be deleted by me, and does not even go when I press the up arrow key several more times.
For instance, if the last 4 commands I entered were (from least recent to most recent): clear, man man, this that and help.
Then, when I look at previous commands by pressing the up key incrementally:
help is visible properly.
this that is visible properly.
Note how this is appended at the start. I cannot delete it if I try.
Continues to stay as I press the up key.
How can I resolve this issue?
Each of the escape-sequences in your prompt has to be bracketed with \[ and \] to tell bash that those characters should be ignored for the purpose of counting columns. The last one in your example is not bracketed:
export PS1="\n\[\033[1;31m\]\u 🖖 \[\033[1;32m\]# \[\033[1;32m\]\h \[\033[0;35m\]in \[\033[0;36m\]\w\n\[\033[0;34m\]> \[\033[1;37m\] \e[0m"
i.e., \e[0m
If you fix the error, bash is likely to give better results. This shows the suggested correction;
export PS1="\n\[\033[1;31m\]\u 🖖 \[\033[1;32m\]# \[\033[1;32m\]\h \[\033[0;35m\]in \[\033[0;36m\]\w\n\[\033[0;34m\]> \[\033[1;37m\] \[\e[0m\]"
I have cygwin installed on my Windows 7 box and I have been running into a problem where when I type a command it will occasionally be wrapped back onto the same line, deleting the bash prompt. Here is an example:
The command in question is command "201" (4 lines from the bottom). I included the others for context.
The text of the command I was typing was
git commit -m "Forced LF line endings."
(Note: I am posting this with mostly git commands, but the problem occurs with any command. I have not noticed a pattern yet.)
It jumped to the start of the line and started to overwrite my prompt.
When I push the up arrow (to view the history) the result is even weirder:
(Note the cursor is many characters past the end of the command.)
When I try to backspace the cursor from that position, I can only go back this far:
Then when I go up into the history from that backspaced line, I get this:
The command starts from the end of the text that is displayed. (This is consistent for the entire history) But when I go up in the history to the faulty git commit ... it displays as it did before with the overwritten text but when I go past it, it deletes a line of the prompt and displays the previous entry in the history the same way it was doing it before (a la image 2).
When I was creating my PS1 variable I has odd output like this, but I have since closed my brackets and things and don't think that is causing the issue. However if you would like to see my .bash_profile (that sets the PS1) feel free to see it on GitHub. It is really short.
I have tried searching for the issue and can only find a few cygwin email archives about the line wrapping in xterm, but no solutions.
PS: As I was pushing the latest .bash_profile, in order to link it, I ran into the problem again when I typed git add .bash_profile and hit enter, it ran the command but returned the cursor to the start of the same command instead of printing a new prompt.
Then when I as writing another commit line, it did the same as the first image, but it blacked out the rest of the line (It wrapped the line, but overwrote the entire line and not just the first few chars.)
See http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/bash.1.html#contenttoc26:
\[
begin a sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed a terminal control sequence into the prompt
\]
end a sequence of non-printing characters
If you don't enclose non-printing characters (e.g. color sequences) in your prompt with these their length is counted as part of the prompt's length, eventually resulting in the symptoms that you describe.
It doesn't occur frequently to me. When it does, I just type in 'kill -WINCH $$' into the cygwin terminal and it fixes the problem. link to source
I've just started using Terminal (the CLI for Mac OS X).
When I run a command, get some information back, run another command, get more info etc., it is hard (on the eyes) to find a certain point on the screen (e.g. the output for the command before last).
Is there a way of adding a vertical empty space to the end of each output/ after each command is run that has no output?
Each new command that you enter is preceded by a "prompt", and these can be customized (though the exact way to customize depends on the shell). Since you mention Mac OS X I'm assuming you are using the default bash shell, in which case the absolute simplest way to add a blank line is like this: PROMPT_COMMAND=echo. You can run that command to try it out, or add it to a startup file (like .profile in your home folder) to have it done automatically each time.
If you use Bash 4.4 and you want a blank line after your prompt, you could set the PS0 prompt to a newline:
PS0="\n"
Now, this will be inserted every time you run a command:
$ echo "Hello"
Hello
Wondering this too, I've looked at the menu options in Terminal & most of the control characters one can type in and nothing does this on a keystroke. You can however enter an echo command, it alone to leave a single blank line below it before the next prompt. echo \n will add an extra blank line to that, echo \n\n to do 2 extra, ie. 3 blank lines, etc. (you can also do echo;echo;echo getting the same effect)
You can create a shell alias like alias b='echo;echo' (i couldn't seem to get the \n notation to work in a alias), then entering b on a prompt will leave a double-blank line, not bad. Then you gotta figure out how to save aliases in your .profile script.
I tried making an alias for the command ' ' ie. space character, which I though you could type like \ (hmm, stack overflow not formatting this well, that's backslash followed by a space, then return to execute it), but the bash shell doesn't seem to allow an alias with that name. It probably wouldn't allow a function named that either (similar to alias), though I didn't check.
I often use the fish shell, and I found that it does allow a function with that name! Created with function ' '; echo \n; end and indeed it works; at the shell prompt, typing the command \ (again backslash space) leaves a double blank line.
Cool, but.. I tried saving this function using funcsave ' ' (how you save functions in fish, no messing with startup scripts!) and afterwards the function no longer works :^( This is probably a bug in the fish shell. It's in active development right now though, I think I'll report this as a bug since I would kind of like this to work myself.
One could also send Apple a feature request through their bug reporter for an Insert Blank Line menu/keyboard command in Terminal. If someone pays attention to your request it might be implemented in a year maybe.
I wanted to solve exactly the same, and for anyone interested in doing the same, I used what tripleee said in his comment here - I created a .bash_profile (see details here) with the line export PS1="\n\n$ ".
Hopefully that helps someone else too!
I know how to make shell command run in vim,in command mode,type
:!shell_command
Now, I have a command in line 16 of a file open in Vim.
cp /home/debian/Downloads/rar/rar /usr/local/bin
How can I run this command in vim, without typing all of it?
When I hit :! to open up the ex command line and then use <C-r>", I get this:
ls /tmp^m
I have to erase ^m with the backspace key, and press the enter key, is that right?
can i not to let ^M to be shown ?
To run the command on the line your cursor is on you can yank the line into you clipboard. Type :! to open up the ex command line and then use <C-r>" to paste the command onto the command line.
So with the cursor on the line type and hit enter.
yy:!<C-r>"
Take a look at :h <c-r>.
CTRL-R {0-9a-z"%#:-=.} *c_CTRL-R* *c_<C-R>*
Insert the contents of a numbered or named register. Between
typing CTRL-R and the second character '"' will be displayed
to indicate that you are expected to enter the name of a
register.
The text is inserted as if you typed it, but mappings and
abbreviations are not used. Command-line completion through
'wildchar' is not triggered though. And characters that end
the command line are inserted literally (<Esc>, <CR>, <NL>,
<C-C>). A <BS> or CTRL-W could still end the command line
though, and remaining characters will then be interpreted in
another mode, which might not be what you intended.
Special registers
Simple answer:
:exec '!'.getline('.')
Example: I want to bind the F12 key to the command echo "foobar" such that every time I hit F12 the message "foobar" will be printed to screen. Ideally it could be any arbitrary shell command, not just builtins. How does one go about this?
You can determine the character sequence emitted by a key by pressing Ctrl-v at the command line, then pressing the key you're interested in. On my system for F12, I get ^[[24~. The ^[ represents Esc. Different types of terminals or terminal emulators can emit different codes for the same key.
At a Bash prompt you can enter a command like this to enable the key macro so you can try it out.
bind '"\e[24~":"foobar"'
Now, when you press F12, you'll get "foobar" on the command line ready for further editing. If you wanted a keystroke to enter a command immediately, you can add a newline:
bind '"\e[24~":"pwd\n"'
Now when you press F12, you'll get the current directory displayed without having to press Enter. What if you've already typed something on the line and you use this which automatically executes? It could get messy. However, you could clear the line as part of your macro:
bind '"\e[24~":"\C-k \C-upwd\n"'
The space makes sure that the Ctrl-u has something to delete to keep the bell from ringing.
Once you've gotten the macro working the way you want, you can make it persistent by adding it to your ~/.inputrc file. There's no need for the bind command or the outer set of single quotes:
"\e[24~":"\C-k \C-upwd\n"
Edit:
You can also create a key binding that will execute something without disturbing the current command line.
bind -x '"\eW":"who"'
Then while you're typing a command that requires a username, for example, and you need to know the names of user who are logged in, you can press Alt-Shift-W and the output of who will be displayed and the prompt will be re-issued with your partial command intact and the cursor in the same position in the line.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work properly for keys such as F12 which output more than two characters. In some cases this can be worked around.
The command (who in this case) could be any executable - a program, script or function.
You can define bash key bindings in ~/.inputrc (configuration file for the GNU Readline library). The syntax is
<keysym or key name>: macro
for example:
Control-o: "> output"
will create a macro which inserts "> output" when you press ControlO
"\e[11~": "echo foobar"
will create a macro which inserts "echo foobar" when you press F1... I don't know what the keysym for F11 is off hand.
Edit:
.inputrc understands the \n escape sequence for linefeed, so you can use
"\e[11~": "echo foobar\n"
Which will effectively 'press enter' after the command is issued.
This solution is specific to X11 environments and has nothing to do with bash, but adding the following to your .Xmodmaps
% loadkeys
keycode 88 = F12
string F12 = "foobar"
%
will send the string "foobar" to the terminal upon hitting F12.
I wanted to bind Ctrl+B to a command. Inspired by an answer above, I tried to use bind but could not figure out what series of cryptic squiggles (\e[24~ ?) translate to Ctrl+B.
On a Mac, go to Settings of the Terminal app, Profiles -> Keyboard -> + then press the keyboard shortcut you're after and it comes out. For me Ctrl+B resulted in \002 which i successfully bound to command
bind '"\002":"echo command"'
Also, if you want the command to be executed right-away (not just inserted in to the prompt), you can add the Enter to the end of your command, like so:
bind '"\002":"echo command\015"'