Re: Mangled prompt in xterm under XFree86 4.x

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hi, Dmitry!

>     In xterm under XFree86 4.x the prompt is "prefixed" with a "^O", so that
> instead of e.g. "goofy:~ " one sees "^Ogoofy:~" (shell is zsh with
> PS1='%m:%~%# ').

I have seen this problem.  It's specific to zsh.  Maybe strip_ctrl_codes()
should strip control characters (like Ctrl-O), not just escape sequences.

I don't think there is anything wrong with zsh using control charachers
because it is done in the assumption that they will be interpreted, not
printed as is.

On my xterm infocmp shows that ^O is rmacs - end alternate character set.
I cannot blame zsh for taking care of the problem.  Sometimes applications
"forget" for turn alt charset off (or crash while using it), then you have
funny characters everywhere.  zsh tries to prevent it.

But we should study the problem a bit more before going ahead with the
patch.  If you want to debug the subshell I recommend attaching gdb
running on another console instead of running mc from gdb.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin