Actually, you are right. If I run the shell in a real terminal emulator
(e.g. gnome-terminal), the output is always OK. The problem only appears
when I run my shells on M-x term (or multi-term) in Emacs.

The odd thing is that, as I reported on the email starting this thread, the
problem with the output only happens when I *switch* shells, and only with
Option (2), and not with Option (1) (see my original email).

James



On Wed, May 1, 2013 at 7:01 AM, f gr <frgroccia@gmail.com> wrote:

> From Frank Terbeck's message of 2013-05-01T11:36+0200:
>
> > f. gr wrote:
> > > Excerpt from James Jong's message
> > > of 2013-04-30T17:07-0400:
> > > [...]
> > >> $ ls
> > >> 2;ls --color=yes -aF1;ls./ ../ file1 file2 file3
> > >>
> > >> In other words, zsh shows 2;COMMAND 1; and then the output
> > >> without line breaks, which is of course very different from what
> > >> I was getting with Option 1.
> > >>
> > >> What can I do to diagnose the problem? Any pointers would be
> > >> greatly appreciated
> > >
> > > I use grml's zsh setup. I get the output like you: if I run the
> > > system by runlevel 1 (or 3) and type the command ls, zsh shows the
> > > following:
> > > ;root@hostname: ls [without any line breaks]
> >
> > Sounds like broken preexec()/precmd() hooks to set terminal titles.
> > If you didn't write those yourself, I'd suggest you report it to
> > the person who did.
> >
> > You can try this to check:
> >
> >   % unfunction preexec
> >   % unfunction precmd
> >   % unset preexec_functions
> >   % unset precmd_functions
>
> the first two commands got:
> "
> unfunction: no such hash table element: preexec
> unfunction: no such hash table element: precmd
> "
>
> > > As a normal user the same. The curious thing is that when I run
> > > the shell by a terminal emulator (in my case xfce4-terminal) the
> > > output is OK.
> >
> > I happen to know the grml-setup a fair bit, and I think its title
> > hooks are fairly solid. If you mess with $TERM however and make the
> > setup think it is running in a terminal that would support terminal
> > title setting, although it's actually a terminal that doesn't, then
> > things like this can happen as well.
> >
> > If you still think it's a bug, visit the grml folks on IRC:
> >
> >   #grml on the freenode network
> >
> > ...and tell them, or report a bug via their bug tracking system:
> >
> >   http://bts.grml.org/grml/
>
> I'll ask grml team.
>
>
>