Re: extraneous ^A^B in ipython within emacs shell

[Lowell Gilbert]

kj <no.email@please.post> writes:

> Hi.  When I run ipython within the emacs shell, the ipython prompt
> shows some extraneous characters; it looks like this:
>
> ^A^BIn [^A^B1^A^B]: ^A^B
>
> ...instead of like this:
>
> In [1]:
>
> The prompt is supposed to have a special color (and in fact, it
> appears with the expected color under the emacs shell); I imagine
> that this coloring probably has something to do with these unwanted
> characters.
>
> FWIW, the TERM* variables are set to:
>
> % printenv | grep TERM
> TERM=dumb
> TERMCAP=
>
>
> I'm running all this in OS X (Snow Leopard), and the version of
> Emacs is 23.1.1.  The problem appears whether I run emacs under
> X11 or with the -nw option.
>
> Also, FWIW, I just installed this version of ipython that has this
> unwanted interaction with the emacs shell; the previous version
> did not have this problem.  Lastly, this ipython displays fine if
> I run it on a Terminal window rather than an emacs shell window.

Right.  The emacs shell mode is a "dumb" terminal type.  It can't do
extended text attributes.  So tell your prompt not to use those on dumb
terminal types, or avoid using that shell mode (you might find eterm,
term, terminal-mode, or one of the other options more to your liking).