UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

So, this is strange... I created this prompt:

Code:

PS1='\n\e[32;40m${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w : \j job(s)\n\@\$ \e[0m'

You can see that it's a pretty minor modification of the default Debian prompt. And, if it matters, I'm using Putty to SSH to my server. The following strange symptoms appear when I use that prompt, and disappear when I change and source to the default:

1) If I type 16 or more characters at the command line, the first 4 get "stuck". Please pardon me if this isn't clear... it's a little odd to describe. Suppose I type "abcdefghijklmnop". If I then hit ^A to return to the start of the line, my cursor ends up on the "e", not the "a". Nothing I do can move it to a, b, c, or d. Not back-arrow, not backspace, nothing.

2) If I up-arrow to review history, at some point the first 4 characters of a previous command will get stuck in the same way. After that, all the prior commands are appended to those stuck characters. The commands still work, though. For example, "ll /crontab -e" brought up the crontab editor properly, so apparently those first 4 are ignored for this purpose.

Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.

It may count escape sequences as part of the string's length, and so assume it's longer than it actually is when printed.

That's a helpful hint. I tried removing different options. Removing the color option fixed the problem. So, I tried using separate color tags for the first and second lines. The problem came back, and worse-- now it's ~10 chars that are "fixed" at the beginning of the line, in keeping with the longer escaped sequences. So, no solution, but a little reworking made the prompt just as informative, and with no strange problem, albeit at the cost of a very boring little pound sign. :-) Many thanks.