Post #1401344

2026-04-18 08:52 UTC

I don&#39;t want to computer more this weekend than I have so can someone volunteer as tribute?-- I have this shell ps1 prompt which includes a 👩🏻‍💻 me, and but because of either terminal or whatever, the cursor gets push many chars further. So like ``` pmpt 👩🏻‍💻 $ | pmpt 👩🏻‍💻 $ git | ``` as opposed to ``` pmpt 👩🏻‍💻 $ | pmpt 👩🏻‍💻 $ git| ``` I tried %{%} but it did nothing. This Is macOS w Terminal. I feel like a very easy solution must exist. Please help?

Replies (6)

@kevin@gimbel.dev 2026-04-18 09:09

@muan I’d be very interested in the solution as I’ve faced similar issues! I think the core problem is that 👩🏻‍💻 is made up of multiple Unicode characters, which causes rendering issues. I’ve had some super weird render issues lately with WezTerm and Ghostty on latest MacOS :(

Open ##1401349
@map@xoxo.zone 2026-04-18 09:33

@muan This looks like an issue cause by the emoji being a cluster of four different code points: woman, skin tone modifier, zero-width joiner, laptop. Have you tried a different font?

Open ##1401350
@mikesax@mas.to 2026-04-18 09:51

@muan Are you using a tab character? My guess is that the code is counting how many spaces to add to the next tab position based on the number of bytes rather than the actual horizontal position of the cursor before the tab character. That would have made sense in a world of single byte, fixed space characters but not today.

Open ##1401352
@dgraham@mastodon.social 2026-04-18 15:22

@muan This was a fun collab! https://github.com/github/g-emoji-element/pull/18

Open ##1401354
@dgraham@mastodon.social 2026-04-18 15:51

@muan I reported this bug with my developer account. I have no idea if Feedback Assistant is identical to shouting into the void, though.

Open ##1401355
@zakj@mastodon.social 2026-04-18 17:26

@muan Seems to be a bug in Terminal.app. 😕 I was able to reproduce in different shells, and couldn’t find a workaround. Your prompt works correctly for me in both kitty and ghostty, but I get that switching terminal apps may not be the solution you were hoping for!

Open ##1401357