MSYS2 on Win7 prints "Can't find file" after every command? - linux

Question

I just installed MSYS2 on my Windows 7 VM and the only stuff I've really done so far was that I modified my ~/.bashrc file by adding a few lines.
The only stuff I added to the file was a few alias cmds, an export cmd, and I modified the PS1 variable. See below:
alias ll='ls -l'
alias la='ls -A'
alias cls='clear'
export PATH="$PATH:/home/Matt/bin"
PS1=$(print '\033]0;${PWD}\n\033[32m${USER}#${HOSTNAME}:\033[33m${PWD/${HOME}/\~}>\033[0m ')
Other then that stuff above, that's all I've really done. So after making the changes to ~/.bashrc I exited from MSYS2's command prompt and then restarted MSYS2 to make the .bashrc changes go into effect. I know I could have just re-sourced the file but I just quickly exited and restarted instead...
Then, after I restarted MSYS2 this printed as the first line in the terminal --> "Can't find file" and then after everytime I hit enter at the cmd prompt it prints "Can't find file" just before the next prompt prints to the screen, like below:
Terminal shows this when I start-up MSYS2:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Can't find file
Matt#My-Win7VM:~> ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 My-Win7VM+Matt My-Win7VM+None 0 Jun 3 12:01 bin
Can't find file
Matt#My-Win7VM:~>
Can't find file
Matt#My-Win7VM:~>
Can't find file
Matt#My-Win7VM:~>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Any ideas what file it could be talking about that it can't seem to find..?
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in Advance,
Matt

Answer 1

Ok I think I found the problem.
I ran the env command, and the PS1 environment variable was showing this
PS1=Can't find file \033]0;${PWD}\n\033[1;31m${USER}#${HOSTNAME}:\033[1;34m${PWD/${HOME}/\~}>\033[0m
So I removed the export PS1=${print ...} line from my ~/.bashrc file to just a double quoted variable assignment, instead of using the print command.
Because it looks like the print command is trying to be run from "/c/Windows/system32/print" and if you pass it a string you can see the error that was showing:
$ which print
/c/Windows/system32/print
$ print "Hello World"
Can't find file Hello World
So as you can see, that print command is expecting a filename, and not a string. So switching it to just an assignment statement like below, fixed the error:
export PS1="\033[1;31m${USER}#${HOSTNAME}:\033[1;34m${PWD/${HOME}/\~}>\033[0m "
Now everything seems ok.
EDIT:
Ran into new problem where the directory in the prompt wasn't changing when I switched dirs... Found out I was using the wrong method. So I found the PS1 switches and now it's all better this time:
PS1="\033[1;31m\u#\h:\033[0m\033[1;34m\w>\033[0m "
-Matt

Answer 2

Looks like you've copied your $PS1 from /etc/profile
Try the $PS1 variable from /etc/bash.bashrc instead:
# Set a default prompt of: user#host, MSYSTEM variable, and current_directory
PS1='\[\e]0;\w\a\]\n\[\e[32m\]\u#\h \[\e[35m\]$MSYSTEM\[\e[0m\] \[\e[33m\]\w\[\e[0m\]\n\$ '