Re: Length of %? in prompt

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2002, Ian Lynagh wrote:

> I have just a couple more problems. Firstly I can't find a way to have
> ANSI escape sequences actually executed when they are passed through
> psvar - is this possible?

No, it's not possible.  The contents of psvar are always passed through
zsh's internal "nice display" filter, which works sort of like "cat -v".

> And secondly with
>     "%\$((\$COLUMNS-2))>%{%}k>"
> the %{%} appear in the prompt

In %N>STRING> the STRING is not re-interpreted for prompt escapes, but it
is not "nice-filtered" either.  Which also explains this:

> and both
>     "%\$((\$COLUMNS-2))>${(%%):-%{$fg_bold[cyan]%\}}k>"
> and "%\$((\$COLUMNS-2))>\${(%%):-%{$fg_bold[cyan]%\}}k>"
> seem to be counting the length of the ANSI escape sequence in the length
> calculation - am I missing something?

However, it's not making any sense to me that you want to insert a color
change only when the string is truncated.  I think you're probably seeking
something like this:

PS1='%$((COLUMNS/2))> >blah blah blah %<<%{$fg_bold[cyan]%}'

where "blah blah blah" is the variable-width stuff you want truncated.