Re: .emacs_bash

[Will Parsons]

Will Parsons wrote:
> For quite a long time now I've been mildly annoyed that when I invoke a 
> shell (bash) under Emacs (running in a GNU/Linux system) that I get a string
> of prompts, like:
>
> 1 isis$ 2 isis$ 3 isis$ 4 isis$ 5 isis$ 
>
> (PS1 is set to '\! \h\$ '.)
>
> I finally got around to tracking this down, and it appears it's being caused
> by .emacs_bash.  In ~/.bashrc, I have:
>
> export LS_OPTIONS=--color
>
> so that I have pretty colours in ls output, but since this screws up ls 
> output under Emacs, I created the following .emacs_bash:
>
>======
> #  .emacs_bash
> #  This file contains additional commands to be run after starting up the
> #  bash shell under emacs.
> unset LS_OPTIONS
>======
>
> If I remove this file, the multiple prompts go away (and I have the screwed
> up ls output), but I don't understand why it causes the multiple prompts.
>
Following a suggestion by the only responder to my original post, I added 
echo statements to .bashrc and .emacs_bash to see where the multiple prompts
were coming from.  With .emacs_bash as follows:

=====
echo ".emacs_bash starts here"
#  .emacs_bash
#  This file contains additional commands to be run after starting up the
#  bash shell under emacs.
echo "LS_OPTIONS = $LS_OPTIONS"
unset LS_OPTIONS
echo ".emacs_bash ends here"
=====

starting up a shell I see:

.bashrc starts here
.bashrc ends here
1 isis$ .emacs_bash starts here
2 isis$ 3 isis$ 4 isis$ 5 isis$ LS_OPTIONS = --color
6 isis$ 7 isis$ .emacs_bash ends here
8 isis$ 

Deleting the three comment lines in .emacs_bash, I see:

.bashrc starts here
.bashrc ends here
1 isis$ .emacs_bash starts here
2 isis$ LS_OPTIONS = --color
3 isis$ 4 isis$ .emacs_bash ends here
5 isis$ 

So it looks like the extra prompts are related to the lines in .emacs_bash,
whether they are comment lines or not.  As I said, this is a minor annoyance,
but I still would like a fix and/or explanation if possible.

- Will