Bash prompt changes when using arrow keys sometimes

Question

When I use my terminal (iTerm 2 Mac) with my PS1 set to "\[\e[38;5;117m\W \e[39;38;5;104m\$\e[39;0m\] " and I use the arrow keys to go through my bash history it sometimes changes my prompt from ~ $ to just the first character of it and whatever command I'm looking at. For example, going to rvim .bashrc from randomDir $ ls. This problem also persists in the default terminal app.

Answer 1

\W and \$ should not go inside the \[...\], since bash will know how much space each takes up on the terminal.

PS1="\[\e[38;5;117m\]\W \[\e[39;38;5;104m\]\$\[\e[39;0m\] "

Only the characters that make up the ANSI escape sequence (which only instruct the terminal to change colors, without displaying a single additional character) are enclosed in \[...\].

Putting them inside \[...\] tells bash to ignore their contribution to the length of the prompt, leading to incorrect redraws.