On Thu, Aug 06, 2015 at 07:45:53PM +0200, Valentin Schmidt wrote: > Bash displays strange characters (including command prompt) (see attached > png file) after the execution of the base64 (GNU coreutils 8.21) command > like described as follows: > base64 -d base64.txt
Xterm has some escape sequences that switch between a second character set, where many of the ascii letters become line drawing characters instead. Try the following: printf %b '\e(0' {a..z} '\n' '\e(B' {a..z} '\n' This prints the 26 lowercase ascii letters in the second character set, entered by the sequence ESC ( 0, followed by the same line after switching back, with the sequence ESC ( B. In a Gnome Terminal on Ubuntu I get the following output from the above: ▒␉␌␍␊°±␋┘┐┌└┼⎺⎻─⎼⎽├┤┴┬│≤≥ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz Sven Mascheck has written a bit about this fun feature here: http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/alternate_charset/ -- Geir Hauge