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Today I had to install a couple of applications (a Postgres client and other stuff) and I had to setup a few things like environment paths.

I had a couple of aliases working and they stopped working after that. They are set on ~/.bash_profile so I've run source ~/.bash_profile, but then I got my bash prompt messed up, like this:

enter image description here

This is the command within my bash_profile that generates it:

export PS1="\[${BOLD}${MAGENTA}\]\u \[$WHITE\]in \[$GREEN\]\w\[$WHITE\]\$([[ -n \$(git branch 2> /dev/null) ]] && echo \" on \")\[$PURPLE\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[$WHITE\]\n$symbol\[$RESET\]"

As you can see, the \[s and \]s are appearing, when they should not be displayed at all, and the \u, \n, and \w are not being replaced with the appropriate strings. But the colour changes are still working.

I'm a bit confused about what's going on here, any ideas?

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  • 1
    What exactly is the problem, and what did you try to do ?
    – user264413
    Commented Dec 13, 2017 at 16:38
  • Yeah you changed your PS1 variable and now the prompt look's different - change it back, or just type export PS1="> " to have a cleaner prompt.
    – manifestor
    Commented Dec 13, 2017 at 19:16

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Seems like some expert thought it a good idea to obfuscate ANSI color codes in environment variables and use them in a custom prompt, meanwhile messing up the escape syntax, then setting the prompt "for you" without asking.

Comment out the PS1 line and you should get a default prompt. Or change it to something you prefer, but better don't rely on custom environment variables.

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