topic Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k in Operating System - HP-UX

Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

JLiYim — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 05:59:15 GMT

Hi,

I have set the command prompt (PS1) to show the current working directory and am currently using vi to recall command history.

However, if my prompt is greater than 80 chars, it will be truncated to 80 chars when I recall the previous command using ESC-k. My screen width is 150 chars and it is really annoying and confusing when this happens.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

Thanks,
John

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Pete Randall — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:11:58 GMT

John,

I just tried it with a 100 character (bogus) command and got all 100 characters back. I had to scroll to the right to see them, but they were there. I'm using an HPTerm on CDE with 11.11 (PA-RISC flavored), and "set -o vi" + "export HISTFILE=" to get command line editing.

Pete

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Andreas Voss — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:19:30 GMT

Hi,

try this command to set the current window size environment:

eval $(resize)

Regards

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Sanjay Kumar Suri — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:28:52 GMT

Have you tried using following to edit the command?

h : move cursor one character to left
l : move cursor one character to right

sks

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

JLiYim — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:32:00 GMT

It's not the command that gets truncated. It is the command prompt ... You can test this by going to a directory path that is greater than 80 chars with your command prompt set to display the current directory (export PS1='$PWD >>').

eval $(resize) does not work.

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Pete Randall — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:40:11 GMT

Oh, I see. In that case, you've got me. I would find having a command prompt of varying width (let alone greater than 80 characters!) far more disconcerting!

Sorry I couldn't help.

Pete

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Stephen Keane — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:46:21 GMT

This appears to be a limitation/feature of the command prompt PS1 rather than the pwd command. If you set PS1 to a long string, it only displays the right hand 80 characters.

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Sanjay Kumar Suri — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 06:54:44 GMT

Check this link (last 20 lines):

http://www.nersc.no/~knutal/unix_tips.html

sks

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

JLiYim — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:22:57 GMT

This does not happen on CYGWIN and I wonder whether other UNIX platforms (SUN/IBM/Linux) have the same issue.

Anybody who has worked on Oracle E-Business Suite knows that some directory paths can easily be more than 80 chars and this is one of the reason why I set the window's width to be 140 or more.

I do not think that is is an issue with PS1 as this does not happen when I use emacs as the command editor.

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

JLiYim — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 07:33:28 GMT

Correction ... it does happen when I use emacs but only when I use CTRL-L. If I just use CTRL-P and CTRL-N, the command prompt remain unchanged.

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Geoff Wild — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 08:44:26 GMT

Expand window, type in:

resize

Then you should see it.

This is what I do fro .profile

HOST=`uname -n`
PS1="
\$LOGNAME@\$HOST [ \$PWD ]
# ";export PS1

That way, commands are on line below the path.

Rgds...Geoff

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

JLiYim — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 10:57:31 GMT

If there is no way to prevent the truncate, how can I ensure that the prompt only display the last 80 characters?

Currently, PS1 is set as follows:
export PS1='['`whoami`'@'`uname -n`']$PWD>> '

John

Re: Command Prompt get truncated to 80 chars whenever recall command using ESC-k

Bill Hassell — Fri, 07 Jan 2005 14:09:53 GMT

After a while, these really long $PWD prompts can be very annoying, even if they are on a separate line. Usually, you know the parent structure of where you are located and you only need the current directory and the next higher directory. This will accomplish that task and avoid the truncation:

export PS1='${PWD##${PWD%/*/*}/} $ '