Unicode character breaks prompt

[thorstenkampe]

Bug Report

Current Behavior

Starship prompt is right aligned by Unicode character making the prompt and the shell unusable

Expected Behavior

The minimal prompt should display left aligned

KDE Konsole with "bad" character:

KiTTY with "good" character

Additional context/Screenshots

• the issue only occurs in the PuTTY family of terminal emulators (see below)
• the issue is triggered by Unicode character U+FCB5, a "similar" character like U+F489 shows no problem
• Oh my Posh (as an example) does not have the issue

Possible explanation: "bad" character U+FCB5 is "Arabic Ligature Dad with Hah Initial Form", while the "good" character is "Undefined in Unicode". Since Arabic is right to left, that might explain the issue, yet it is unclear why only the combination PuTTY with Starship shows the issue.

Environment

• Starship version: 0.48.0
• Shell type: Bash, Fish, PowerShell
• Shell version: latest ones
• Shell plugin manager: none
• Terminal emulator: PuTTY, KiTTY, Mintty
• Font: DejaVuSansMono NF
• Operating system: Windows 10, Ubuntu 20.10 (connected via SSH)

Starship Configuration

format = "$env_var$character"

[env_var]
format   = ' $symbol $env_value '
# the "good" one: U+F489
#symbol   = ''
# the "bad" one: U+FCB5
symbol   = 'ﲵ'
variable = 'STARSHIP_SHELL'

[mickimnet]

Does Posh use the same Unicode character?

[davidkna]

Possible explanation: "bad" character U+FCB5 is "Arabic Ligature Dad with Hah Initial Form", while the "good" character is "Undefined in Unicode". Since Arabic is right to left, that might explain the issue, yet it is unclear why only the combination PuTTY with Starship shows the issue.

I think that's the most likely cause of this issue.
This is ultimately caused by #2009. According to Alexays/Waybar#628 you might be able to work around your particular issue with a "unicode left-to-right mark". The issue only appearing in Putty is likely caused by different text rendering stacks.

[thorstenkampe]

@mickimnet Yes, Posh and other terminals (Konsole, Conemu) use the same Unicode character.

[thorstenkampe]

@davidkna How can I embed (encode) the left-to-right mark in my configuration?

[davidkna]

Try \u200E

[thorstenkampe]

@davidkna ...works, thanks

[mickimnet]

@thorstenkampe, if it's fine with you, I would close this issue, as we already have #2009 to track the problem.

[thorstenkampe]

@mickimnet yes, sure, please close the issue (plus we have an easy workaround, thanks to @davidkna )