Terminal PS1 and colors

I am used from Linux to have a colored prompt in my shells and also want to implement that in my OS X Terminal.app. The Terminal reacts differently though. If I use my normal PS1 code the right side of any line will be cut down at a strange point (surely not the right end of the Terminal window). And also the next line will not show on the next line but on the same line.

expected reaction:

erik2:~[06:46 am]$ expectedexpectedexpectedexpectedexpectedexpectedexpect
edexpected_

real reaction:

ectedexpected_am]$ expectedexpectedexpectedexpectedexp

Is that normal for Terminal? Is there an alternative? Did I just code something wrong? Have a look at my PS1 code:

export PS1="\033[0;34m\u:\W\e[0;32m[\@]\e[m\033[0;34m$\033[m "

Solution 1:

You need to escape the non-printing parts of the prompt by surrounding them with \[…\].

export PS1="\[\033[0;34m\]\u:\W\[\e[0;32m\][\@]\[\e[m\033[0;34m$\033[m\] "

Otherwise, readline gets confused about the remaining space on the command line.