In GNU Screen, Recalled bash history command displays one character position to the left of actual location

Posted by vergueishon on Super User See other posts from Super User or by vergueishon
Published on 2011-01-26T18:02:03Z Indexed on 2011/02/15 23:28 UTC
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I am running Red Hat 5 32-bit (2.6.18-194.26.1.el5).

The issue is that when I recall any previous command in bash's history, the first character in the command is displayed immediately after the shell prompt, without any intervening space, likeso:

\[me@mymachine tmp]$man mysql

If I enter a Ctrl-C, and retype the command, it looks likeso:

\[me@mymachine tmp]$ man mysql

This makes recalling a command and editing it before re-entering a real pain. Basically, if I try to edit a recalled command, my changes occur one character position to the left (I believe) of what I see on the screen. It's a bit tedious to describe, and appears to only happen with commands with a large number of arguments.

UPDATE: The contents of /etc/sysconfig/bash-prompt-screen,

1 #!/bin/bash
2 echo -n $'\033'"_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}"$'\033\\\\'

and the contents of /etc/bashrc,

 24   screen)
 25     if [ -e /etc/sysconfig/bash-prompt-screen ]; then
 26       PROMPT_COMMAND=/etc/sysconfig/bash-prompt-screen
 27     else
 28     PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/#$HOME/~}"; echo -ne "\033\\"'
 29     fi
 30     ;;

I've disable bash-prompt-screen by renaming it--this fixed it. It's entirely possible that there is a fix to the bash-prompt-screen prompt line in the latest version of screen for RHEL 5. The error is seen under Screen version 4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06. (I noticed an update in the queue, which is installing as I write this.)

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