Solved: Why doesn't "cat" print content of a file to standard output if the content is only a number ?

[vatbier]

Solved: this has already been rapported in september 2002:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=74383 :
        Bug 74383 - start of line is discarded when writing a prompt
Red Hat applied in december a patch from Chet Ramey to
bash-2.05b/lib/readline/display.c
Mandrake currently has this patch only applied in their cooker:
        bash-2.05b-14mdk:
        Bug-Description:
        When running in a locale with multibyte characters, the
        readline display updater will use carriage returns when
        drawing the line, overwriting any partial output already
        on the screen and not terminated by a newline.

Just found this info by accident.

vatbier

********************************
vatbier wrote:

> NO, the output of "cat /var/lock/subsys/dm" is written over by the
> prompt of my shell (dm has a number like 1114)
>   address@hidden home]$ cat /var/lock/subsys/dm
>   address@hidden home]$
> My system is Mandrake Linux 9.1 with bash v2.05b
> Is it possible to change this bash behaviour so that the prompt
> doesn't overwrite output of a command?
> 
> If I type this:
>   address@hidden home]$ echo -n "This is an example of what happens" >me
>   address@hidden home]$ cat me
>   address@hidden home]$  of what happens
> then I have to press Enter to be able to write at my prompt.
> 
> Also the reason why I thought this only happened with a number
> was that I tested it with text files created by KWrite. I just
> found out that (sometimes) if I replace a number with some other
> characters KWrite adds a newline character by itself. I then had
> the impression that it didn't happen with text characters.
> 
> Thank you all for the quick responses,
> 
> vatbier