Re: PS0 vs. \[ \]

Chet Ramey <[email protected]> Mon, 18 May 2026 10:39:23 -0400

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.shells.bash.bugs
Organization	ITS, Case Western Reserve University
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

On 5/15/26 7:34 AM, Egmont Koblinger wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The manual's PROMPTING section says that PS[0124] support a long list of
> escaped characters, including \[ and \].
> 
> Actually, in bash-5.3.9, PS0 does not support \[ and \]. If these are
> present in its value, their corresponding raw 0x01 and 0x02 bytes do get
> printed, rather than getting eliminated.

The \[ and \] escapes only matter to readline, so it's reasonable to ignore
them for PS0 and PS4 (though it makes no sense to include them in $PS4,
at least). Bash already ignores them when line editing isn't enabled.

Chet

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    [email protected]    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

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