bash prompt shell displayed differently in terminal and tty console

Question

This is a portion of my ~/.bashrc:

prompt(){
    local EXIT="$?"  # return code
    PS1=""
    local red="\[\033[0;31m\]"  # text colour
    local purple="\[\033[0;35m\]"  # text colour
    local normal="\[\033[0m\]"  # text colour

    if [ $EXIT == 0 ]; then  # $EXIT colour based upon its value
        local return="${normal}${?}"
    else
        local return="${red}${?}${normal}"
    fi

    PS1+="${normal}[${purple}\\D{%-l:%M%P}${normal}]${return} \\[\\e]0; \
    \\u@\\h: \\w\\a\\]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\\u@\\h:\\w\\$ "
}

export PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt

This is my prompt shell in gnome-terminal (correctly displayed):

[5:01pm]0 user@host:~$

But when I switch to tty console, after I logged in, this is displayed:

[5:05pm]0 ;user@host: ~user@host:~$

This happens with regular user, but also with root on the same notebook on the same operating system. Colours are always correctly displayed, the only problem is with the way the prompt is displayed.

Sofware versions:

GNU bash, version 4.3.11(1)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu),
Ubuntu Gnome 14.04.

Some explanation of the PS1 value:

[5:01pm]   # current time
0          # return/exit code of the last command (0 can be any number;
           # if return code has a non-zero value, it turns red)

PS – Currently in tty consoles, I need to source ~/.bashrc to be able to used all of my settings. (1) Where is located the tty console’s own .bashrc? (2) Or how to set it up to use the ~/.bashrc?

Solution of the different behaviour of prompt

As the accepted answer suggests, in PS1 variable, there was a part which should be omitted, thus I just changed the last row of the function to

PS1+="${normal}[${purple}\\D{%-l:%M%P}${normal}]${return} \
${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\\u@\\h:\\w\\$ "

Solution of the Post Scriptum (PS)

tty consoles use ~/.bashrc_profile instead of ~/.bashrc, because (as @chepner said in comment below) the latter is sourced by GUI terminal emulator (for it usually starts a non-login interactive shell). tty console is an interactive shell.

My solution is to add the following to ~/.bash_profile:

. ~/.bashrc

`.bashrc` is specific to the user logging in, not the terminal type. — chepner, May 05 '15 at 16:11
So I thought, too, but even though I do log in with the same credatials to GUI mod (and thus to gnome-terminal) and to tty console, still in tty console, if I want to use the `~/.bashrc` settings, first I need to enter `source ~/.bashrc` command. — tukusejssirs, May 05 '15 at 19:46
When you login to the console, the `login` program is starting a login shell, which sources `.bash_profile`, not `.bashrc`. A GUI terminal emulator typically starts a non-login interactive shell, which sources `.bashrc`, not `.bash_profile`, since your GUI was presumably started from a login shell. It's a fairly common practice to include `source ~/.bashrc` from your `.bash_profile`, so that `.bashrc` is sourced for all interactive shells, whether or not they are login shells. — chepner, May 05 '15 at 19:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '15 at 16:44

You have \\[\\e]0; \\u@\\h: \\w\\a\\] and \\u@\\h:\\w\\$ in PS1.

The question is why is your terminal not showing that first set but your console is.

The answer, I believe, is that you have that first set enclosed in a \[...\] block which indicates that it is non-printing and takes up no space (this is why you need to enclose color codes in \[...\] to avoid the prompt being shorter than the terminal expects when the codes don't create visible characters.

This is causing gnome-terminal to discard everything (even visible characters) from the output/contents of the \[...\] block.

The console, presumably, is simply printing visible characters (and ignoring non-printing characters). (I wonder if this causes prompt size miscalculations or not.)

The solution here is to remove that first (seemingly unintentional) set of escapes.

bash prompt shell displayed differently in terminal and tty console

1 Answers1