your prompt might be displaying it; what is the output from "echo $prompt" ?

@JeffSchaller I added the output from echo $prompt in my question.

did echo $prompt really produce two lines of output? I'm reading through tcsh's formatting sequences and it seems to me that only %c or %C would produce (indirect) "..." text. and are there really a bunch of spaces between the main part of your prompt, after the ..., and before the "%" ? While I'm at it, what do you get from echo $promptchars (assuming it has "%" at the beginning)

echo $promptchars gives the output %#. And there were no spaces between the cursor and the command echo $prompt, that was just a formatting issue, I think, my apologies. I'm updating the question with a screenshot of echo $prompt as well, I think it could help.

That clears it up. Something has set your prompt to have a literal "..." in it. I'm assuming you set the prompt in your ~/.tcshrc; would you be willing to post that file, or at least the prompt section of it?

@JeffSchaller sadly, my ~/.tcshrc file is completely blank, there's nothing in it.

Ok, tcsh's startup says it reads: /etc/csh.cshrc and /etc/csh.login. Then ~/.tcshrc (which your is blank), then if .tcshrc is not there ~/.cshrc, then ~/.login. Can you see if any of those are setting the prompt variable?

just a second

one of those files presumably changed between the GUI terminal and the putty terminal sessions

grep prompt /etc/csh.cshrc /etc/csh.login ~/.cshrc ~/.login

/etc/csh.cshrc is similar* to what you ended up with, but not exactly. Something else set it. Did you happen to copy/paste in any "set prompt= ..." strings in your putty session?

umm, I'm pretty sure I didn't use a set prompt = .. It was a very brief putty session, where I noticed that maven was not working, so I used exit and logged out of it. Just 3 -4 minutes in total.

(where you put in the backslash at the end of the first line, hit enter, then at the "? " prompt of the second line, enter what I have there

should I do this in the /etc/csh.cshrc file?

I would suggest ~/.tcshrc

okay, I'll try it now

then just start a new shell from your current one (tcsh), or replace it (exec tcsh), or exit and log back in

(or source ~/.tcshrc)

the only other idea I have at the moment is if you sourced any files for maven? (or any other software) - those could have changed 'prompt' (though I'd be of the opinion that 3rd-party software shouldn't be changing your prompt on you)

"cd ..." should (generally) just give you a "no such directory" type error, and not change your prompt

the "mvn command not found" is interesting & suspicious - makes me think that something changed globally on the system --- maybe /etc/profile?

is this how it's supposed to be?

shrug at least the dots are gone! :)

yeah, that's true :)

I just took what you had originally and removed the dots. it's your prompt - set it up how you like it :)

when I do bash

(use bash instead of tcsh if you can)

so all on one line for bash? you'd rather have 1 line in tcsh?

this is what I get, any way I can get the cursor to appear on the same line in tcsh?

sure - take away the trailing backslash and put it all together in one line in your ~/.tcshrc

I mean yeah, I just don't want to mess up anything from what it was before :(

else my company would screw me over

set prompt='[%U%n%u@%m:%B%~%b]%B%#%b '

cool, thanks, I'll try it now

still a mystery why it became mangled, but you have a ~/.tcshrc that sets it now, and you can always rerun "source ~/.tcshrc" if it becomes mangled again.

(also, looks like your bash prompt does not have the square brackets; feel free to remove those in your .tcshrc if you like)

How do I get a % instead of > as the last character

one min

set promptchars='%'

or just hard-code it instead of using the %# part

still don't know what messed up everything!

should I show you the /etc/profile?

or any other file you think might be the likely reason

me, neither! sure, ' grep prompt /etc/profile ' and see what comes up

looks like there's no match

I get a new cursor line

well, sounds like an unresolved mystery. I'd say you could wait a day or two and see if anyone else comes up with ideas, otherwise close or self-answer the question by saying you set your own prompt in ~/.tcshrc

all right, will do, many thanks for your help!!

sure thing!