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Message-ID: <3B42A8F4.8010508@Interwoven.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 22:26:12 -0700
From: Sandeep Tamhankar <sandman AT Interwoven DOT com>
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To: Randall R Schulz <rrschulz AT cris DOT com>
CC: "David A. Cobb" <superbiskit AT home DOT com>,
        Cygwin General MailList <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>
Subject: Re: Trouble in RXVT with line wrap
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I mis-spoke earlier.  I didn't mean escape characters.  I meant those \[ 
sequences.  Overall, my prompt problems (and probably problems of the 
person who originally complained about rxvt) was due to pilot error. 
Although to be honest, I still don't understand even after reading the 
PROMPTING section of the bash man page (which I did once a long time 
ago) how to interpret the default PS1 (which works) but which I changed 
since I hated it (I can't stand a prompt that takes up it's own line). 
And I changed it incorrectly.  Here's the default:

sandman AT BWELCH-W2k ~
$ echo $PS1
\[\033]0;\w\007 \033[32m\]\u@\h \[\033[33m\w\033[0m\] $
       ^             ^*                ^         ^
The man page for bash doesn't mention what un-backslashified [ or ] does 
in a prompt (indicated by the ^'s above).  And what the heck's 32m 
(indicated by the *)?  The bash man page never mentions how prompt color 
is changed, although I suspect the parts I've indicated above probably 
do that magic.

Anyway, I did my own changes to the prompt to get rid of some of the 
things I didn't like, but I ended up getting some strange issues when I 
did Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e, as well as just using arrow keys.  But it was 
definitely because I had not set PS1 100% correctly.  But I don't think 
I ever will unless there's some information source that explains this 
stuff better than the bash man page.  I mean, putting escape sequences 
in prompts is not bash-specific or Cygwin-specific.  It's a very common 
thing in UNIX, and so I even tried searching through some man pages in 
my UNIX box.  But sometimes man -k isn't good enough unless you know the 
proper terminology for what you're looking for.

So basically, this whole rxvt thing prompted me to do what I should've 
done months ago for a number of other reasons (i.e. features in zsh that 
bash doesn't have) so it worked out for the best (for me at least; don't 
know about the guy who made the original post! ;) )  But I am curious: 
where does one find information on all these \[ sequences and what they 
do in a vt100 or vt220 or xterm terminal?

-Sandeep

Randall R Schulz wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Here's a little more on the promt business. It has proved popular with 
> fellow nerds in my office:
> 
> My PS1 for any terminal (emulator) that supports it (xterm, xterm-color, 
> vt100, vt102, vt220, cytwin, at least) is this:
> 
> 
> PS1=$'\[\e]0; \u :: \W (\w)\a\]\!> '
> # Note:
> #  This sequence:
> #  ESC]0;
> #      ^ zero
> #  Starts the title setting sequence. Everything from there to
> #  the CTRL-G (also "\a" within $'...') is put in the window title.
> #  Some terminal emulators (notably TeraTerm) put a pretty stingy
> #  limit on how much they'll display, but you don't have to limit
> #  the length you attempt to put there
> 
> 
> I don't mind the information typically put into prompts, but I _hate_ to 
> have it literally in the prompt!
> 
> Randall
> 
> 


-- 
---------------------------------------------
Sandeep V. Tamhankar			
Member of Technical Staff		
Tel: (408) 220-7505
Fax: (408) 774-2002
Email: sandman AT interwoven DOT com

Visit http://www.interwoven.com
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