Adding in a character return is my main solution to this
So my prompt (which has other stuff too, making it even longer) looks like this:
You'll notice that the $ is getting returned as a new line
I achieve this with
HOST='\[\033[02;36m\]\h'; HOST=' '$HOST
TIME='\[\033[01;31m\]\t \[\033[01;32m\]'
LOCATION=' \[\033[01;34m\]`pwd | sed "s#\(/[^/]\{1,\}/[^/]\{1,\}/[^/]\{1,\}/\).*\(/[^/]\{1,\}/[^/]\{1,\}\)/\{0,1\}#\1_\2#g"`'
PS1=$TIME$USER$HOST$LOCATION' \$ '
Note that, even though on a separate line, super long directory trees such as
/home/durrantm/Dropbox/96_2013_archive/work/code/ruby__rails are shortened to
/home/durrantm/Dropbox/_/code/ruby__rails
i.e. "top 3 directories /_/ bottom two directories" which is usually what I care about
This will make sure that the line never gets too long due to directory tree length. If you always want the full directory tree just adjust LOCATION, i.e.
LOCATION=' \[\033[01;34m\]`pwd`'