Ksh93 vs. Pdksh88: Custom PS1 prompt not working

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Greetings!

I have to work with a NFS user id between two hosts: A running Ksh 93 and B running pdksh 88.

My problem has to do with the custom prompt I created on A: it works like a charm and display colors:

   PS1="$'\E[46;31m'`logname`@$'\E[1;33m'`hostname -s`:$'\E[0m>"

But I switch over to B, it all goes to hell (private info removed). The prompt fails to display colors like host A ; instead, the color codes are displayed "in clear".

   $'\E[46;31m'NFS_user_name@$'\E[1;33m'host_name_for_B:$'\E[0m>

The prompt on host B is not displaying colors like host A so I want B to display a basic prompt instead. To get around the problem, I edited my .kshrc file to add this code at the end

    export NODE=`uname -n`
    
    case $NODE in
        host_name_for_B)
            PS1="[`logname`@`uname -n`]>"
            ;;
        *)
            PS1="$'\E[46;31m'`logname`@$'\E[1;33m'`hostname -s`:$'\E[0m>"
            ;;
    esac

The case statement does not work: PS1 does not switch to `PS1="[`logname`@`uname -n`]>"`.

Any idea what could be the problem? Thanks!

2

Which version of ksh is it not working for you: ksh93 or pdksh?

3

Pdksh is the version not working.

4

Why not simply installing ksh93 on host B as pdksh is likely the root cause ?

Alternatively, a more portable way might be:

PS1="$(printf "\033[46;31m%s@\033[1;33m%s\033[0m>" $(logname) $(hostname -s))"
1 Like
5

Great idea. However,

a) not up to me
b) several apps on host B rely of libs that were compiled for pdksh. Don't ask me which libs as I have no idea.

---------- Post updated at 09:48 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:40 AM ----------

Tested your suggestion for a more portable PS1. It works across all my hosts.

Thank you!!:b: