There are lots of extra spaces in terminal output (caused by PROMPT_CR)

[mafredri]

Defining cr in prompt_opts causes zsh to print a carriage return (basically #$COLUMN of spaces) after the last output line to make sure the prompt does not overwrite output in the terminal. Since pure uses a newline in it's pre-prompt this is a non-issue and the spaces are a nuisance when copying text from the terminal.

PROMPT_CR (+V)
Print a carriage return just before printing a prompt in the line editor.
See here

Sample with cr:

Sample without cr:

Between the two samples we see that if the output doesn't end with a newline as with echo -n then there's no breathing space between the output and the new prompt. In my opinion this is actually more correct behavior as it tells the user the output was missing a newline at the end.

I will try to run this for a while locally for a while and see if I spot any unwanted side-effects.

[sindresorhus]

I actually added because I was so annoyed that so many tools didn't print the trailing newline.

[mafredri]

Ah, I see. It should be possible to read the cursor position from the terminal though, if it's not the first character, print an extra newline.

[sindresorhus]

👍

[mafredri]

I found a solution to this, but I don't think I want to merge it as it requires toggling echo of the terminal (stty -echo, only required to prevent accidental output in tmux). It just feels a bit absurd that your zsh theme does this, not to mention potential repercussions (although I don't know of any).

diff --git a/pure.zsh b/pure.zsh
index f6fd34d..82ba2f4 100644
--- a/pure.zsh
+++ b/pure.zsh
@@ -98,6 +98,21 @@ prompt_pure_preprompt_render() {

    # if executing through precmd, do not perform fancy terminal editing
    if [[ "$1" == "precmd" ]]; then
+       {
+           local cursor_position
+           local IFS=";"
+           # stty -echo prevent output from being echoed to terminal
+           stty -echo
+           # printing \033[6n to the terminal outputs current cursor position
+           print -n "\033[6n"
+           # re-enable echo
+           stty echo
+           # read output from print command and prevent outputting to terminal
+           read -s -r -d "R" -A cursor_position
+           # if cursor position is not 1, then output is missing a newline at the end, print it
+           [[ "${cursor_position[2]}" != "1" ]] && print
+       }
+
        print -P "\n${prompt}"
    else
        # only redraw if prompt has changed
@@ -243,7 +258,7 @@ prompt_pure_setup() {
    # if output doesn't end with a newline
    export PROMPT_EOL_MARK=''

-   prompt_opts=(cr subst percent)
+   prompt_opts=(subst percent)

    zmodload zsh/datetime
    autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook

[sindresorhus]

Yeah, looks too hacky. Gonna hit us at some point. I guess it would be better to just remove cr then...

[forivall]

I remember when I first switched to zsh and used other prompts, that ^M would be printed if the command didn't end with a newline nvm that's PROMPT_EOL_MARK. Can something smart be done with that?

[mafredri]

Or we could just close this issue because this can easily be achieved by setting

unsetopt prompt_cr

after

prompt pure

[mafredri]

@forivall sorry for not responding to your comment. Regarding PROMPT_EOL_MARK nothing smart can be done with it AFAIK, it doesn't get applied without cr and you can't e.g. put newlines in it :(.

@sindresorhus I'll leave it up to you to decide if we remove cr or leave it up to the user to use unsetopt prompt_cr.

[zmwangx]

Regarding PROMPT_EOL_MARK nothing smart can be done with it AFAIK, it doesn't get applied without cr and you can't e.g. put newlines in it :(.

I totally hate it. Probably worth submitting a patch to Zsh.

[sindresorhus]

Probably worth submitting a patch to Zsh.

👍 Or even just opening an issue over there ;)

I'll leave it up to you to decide if we remove cr

Remove it.