PS1 env cannot parse on the new mac Catalina

Question

My PS1 variable cannot parsed correctly, it looks like this,

\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]mv .bashrc .bash_profile
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]source .bash_profile
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]ls
Applications    Desktop     Documents   Downloads   Google Drive    Library     Movies      Music       Pictures    Public
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]vim .bash_profile
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\]source .bash_profile
\[\e[;31m\][\u@\h \W]$ \[\e[m\]
\[\e[;31m\][\u@\h \W]$ \[\e[m\]
\[\e[;31m\][\u@\h \W]$ \[\e[m\]
\[\e[;31m\][\u@\h \W]$ \[\e[m\]

What is happened? Thanks.

Norway

Did you end up with that in PS1 on purpose? That very much looks like the result of an unfortunate accident. You should not have mv .bashrc .bash_profile or source .bash_profile, etc.. In fact, you should normally choose just one of the lines \[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] [\w]\[\033[00m\] or \[\e[;31m\][\u@\h \W]$ \[\e[m\]. Personally, I prefer PS1="\[\e[1;30m\]\D{%R}\[\e[1;34m\] \h:\w> \[\e[0m\]". To fix things just choose the prompt you will use and type PS1="yourprompthere" on the command line. Then edit .bashrc and find export PS1="...." and fix there. – Brey

@DavidRankin-ReinstateMonica I use command export PS1="[\e[;31m][\u@\h \W]\$ [\e[m]". But it does not work. – Norway

@DavidRankin-ReinstateMonica Not work. Still show those letters \[\e[1;30m\]\D{}\[\e[1;34m\] \h:\w> \[\e[0m\]export PS1="\[\e[1;30m\]\D{%R}\[\e[1;34m\] \h:\w> \[\e[0m\]" \[\e[1;30m\]\D{}\[\e[1;34m\] \h:\w> \[\e[0m\] – Norway

even export PS1="\w" does not work. My terminal cannot interpret it. – Norway

Well, did you change your shell to the Catalina default, zsh? Could it be that you're trying to feed a Bash PS1 to zsh? I have no idea how zsh interprets prompt strings, though. – Faso

I try [\u@\h:\w]\$ export PS1='\[\e[31m\]\u@\h:\w\[\e[0m\] ' \[\e[31m\]\u@\h:\w\[\e[0m\] which is an example in this link. It still does not work. This is a new mac. I do not whether I should install something or activate PS1. – Norway

If you are using zsh, then you will need something like PS1="%F{243}%T %F{27}%m:%~>%f " Post the output of echo $SHELL – Brey

Thanks. I don't know the catalina default is zsh instead of bash. I change it to bash. – Norway

No problem, had me scratching my head. Thanks @BenjaminW.. See zsh - Prompt Expansion for full documentation on the zsh prompt. Good luck with zsh. I tried for a while, but always came back to bash. – Brey

nod. zsh is more forgiving, but that's a double-edged sword; using it, it's easy to get into habits where code you write for any other shell has serious bugs. I swore it off more than 15 years ago now. On the other hand, the version of bash Apple is willing to ship is ancient; installing your own is pretty near mandatory. – Evars

BTW, in general, shell prompt questions should be on SuperUser or Unix & Linux; they aren't exclusive to software development, as our rules require. (Mac-only questions can also go to Ask Different). – Evars

Answer 1

I came across this issue as well with a brand new Catalina machine. New models seem to default to zsh shell, instead of the traditional bash, to change this:

Go to Users & Groups (unlock to make admin changes) right-click on your admin user, Advanced Options..., change Login shell to /bin/bash

This will allow you to utilize bash's prompt string parsing for a nicer prompt - as mac has traditionally supported in the past.

Gove

Even for Monterey this solution worked well. – Feel