Directory History is not populated when setting PROMPT_COMMAND

[solvedbiscuit71]

Issue

I use the bash shell and installed zoxide via homebrew. The issue was that setting PROMPT_COMMAND seem to interfere with zoxide and not populating the directory history as I navigate through files.

My .bashrc

export PS1="\[\e[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\e[m\]:\[\e[01;34m\]\W\[\e[m\]\$(__git_ps1)\n$ "
export VISUAL=nvim
PROMPT_COMMAND="export PROMPT_COMMAND=echo"
HISTCONTROL=ignorespace
HISTFILESIZE=10000
HISTSIZE=2000
HISTTIMEFORMAT="%F %T "
stty -ixon

eval "$(zoxide init --cmd cd bash)"

I am setting PROMPT_COMMAND to echo a newline after executing each shell command so that I can distinguish between each command. This solution works but introduces the mentioned issue.

What I Tried?

I was able to figure out what changes introduced the bug but not sure why is it happening.

• When setting PROMPT_COMMAND="export PROMPT_COMMAND=echo" the bug is introduced
• Setting the PROMPT_COMMAND after initializing zoxide doesn't fix the issue.
• I tried setting it to PROMPT_COMMAND="echo" and no bug, zoxide just works fine.

I am okay with setting PROMPT_COMMAND="echo" as it does get the job done. but puts an unnecessary newline at the start of the every terminal session which can be annoying.

Version

• bash: GNU bash, version 5.2.37(1)-release (aarch64-apple-darwin24.0.0)
• zoxide: 0.9.6

[ajeetdsouza]

If you just want the default prompt, why are you setting PROMPT_COMMAND at all?

[solvedbiscuit71]

If you meant that why not prepend a '\n' before the PS1? yeah, you can do that instead of setting PROMPT_COMMAND=echo as both variable are means to generate the shell prompt. Though it's cheap there are some issues with it.

• when a new terminal session is created, there would be a newline before the prompt
• while executing clear command there would be a newline before the prompt
• even with ^L shortcut there would be a newline before the prompt

The solution would be to set these variables to fix all the above issues

PROMPT_COMMAND="export PROMPT_COMMAND=echo"
alias clear="unset PROMPT_COMMAND; clear; set PROMPT_COMMAND=export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo'"

But this causes the issue with zoxide. I understand these are small detail, but the reason we setting these are to customize to our needs.

[ajeetdsouza]

This command is what I'm not able to understand:

PROMPT_COMMAND="export PROMPT_COMMAND=echo"

Why are you setting PROMPT_COMMAND, within PROMPT_COMMAND? The next time a prompt is invoked, it will just set your PROMPT_COMMAND to echo (which seems like what you want in the first place).

Just initialize it like this:

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo'
eval "$(zoxide init bash)"

[solvedbiscuit71]

When you create a new terminal session you don't want the PROMPT_COMMAND to execute echo but in the subsequent commands you want to execute echo.

On creating a new terminal session

1. While executing the .bashrc, set PROMPT_COMMAND="export PROMPT_COMMAND=echo"
2. Immediately after executing the .bashrc, in order to generate the shell prompt, value of PROMPT_COMMAND is executed as if it was pasted in the terminal. So execute export PROMPT_COMMAND=echo which sets the PROMPT_COMMAND=echo and NO newline character printed.
3. In subsequent command, after execution the value of PROMPT_COMMAND which is echo is executed. therefore newline character is printed before PS1 is rendered.

I hope I made it clear.

[ajeetdsouza]

Ensure that __zoxide_hook is being called somewhere in your new PROMPT_COMMAND and this should work fine.