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My main setup uses zsh and prezto on Mac OS with a custom prompt theme (I use iTerm2 and not Terminal.app).

I was wondering what's the best way to have a similar experience with an Emacs terminal emulator.

I seems that the answer is easy: M-x ansi-term (or just M-x term ?)

However the prompt is not very nice as Emacs doesn't understand the special character my theme uses (some kind of fat arrow).

How could I fix this? Can I 'detect' in my zshrc file that I'm inside Emacs and change the prompt?

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  • Do you have (set-terminal-coding-system 'utf-8-unix) in your init file?
    – Nsukami _
    Nov 18, 2015 at 14:02
  • I didn't but now I do and it didn't change.
    – Cedric H.
    Nov 18, 2015 at 14:22
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    You can use the INSIDE_EMACS environment variable. The value varies contextually (it is different in a M-x shell buffer than it is in a M-x term buffer), so you can also make more granular decisions if need be.
    – phils
    Apr 3, 2018 at 5:26

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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M-x ansi-term (and M-x term by the way) sets the TERM environment variable to eterm-color, so that's something you can use to adjust the prompt in you .zshrc

I have something similar in my prezto setup (although for dumb terminal, which is even more limited):

# Disable color and theme in dumb terminals.
if [[ "$TERM" == 'dumb' ]]; then
  zstyle ':prezto:*:*' color 'no'
  zstyle ':prezto:module:prompt' theme 'off'
fi

You might want something more subtle in your case !

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  • Thanks, that's what I was looking for. It seems also that prezto automatically switches the prompt off when the terminal is dumb.
    – Cedric H.
    Nov 22, 2015 at 15:06

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