Re: [vox-tech] the last straw... xterm or shell issue!

[Chuck Polisher <cpoMAPSlish@ns.net>]

William Kendrick wrote:
> 
> Ever since I started using this Debian box here at work, I've had
> an issue that I attributed to gnome-terminal, which is the xterm-ish
> thing I run under X.
> 
> Well, I decided to test it, and discovered the issue is actually the
> shell's fault.
> 
> Here's the problem, if I type more than a line's length of text, while
> the text does wrap to the left, it does NOT go a line down.
> 
> So, for example, if I wanted to do this:
> 
>   atari~> mv some_file_with_a_really_long_name.txt /some/really/long/and/involv
>   ed/path/to/another/directory/
> 
> It visually APPEARS like this:
> 
>   ed/path/to/another/directory/eally_long_name.txt /some/really/long/and/involv
> 
> >:^(
> 
> It does this not just in gnome-terminal, but also from the virtual
> consoles.
> 
> I'm running GNU bash, version 2.03.0(1)-release (i386-pc-linux-gnu)
> under Debian 2.2.  Is there some ENV-var I can tweak to make it work _right?_
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -bill!

Search the Bash-Prompt-HOWTO for the env vars PS1, PS2. From the man page:

       PS2    The value of this parameter is expanded and used as
              the secondary prompt string.  The  default  is  ``>
              ''.

I think something like export PS2='\n> ' will do what you want,
but only if you break long lines with a \, so maybe this is a 

       setterm -linewrap on
 or
       setterm -term linux

type of thing. Hmmmm, those don't reproduce the behavior on
_my_ bash xterm. It's prolly something set from within debian's
default .bashrc somewhere, though.

Chuck Polisher