fzf border not visible on Linux TTY

[Zocker1999NET]

Checklist

• [x] I have read through the manual page (man fzf)
• [x] I have searched through the existing issues
• [x] For bug reports, I have checked if the bug is reproducible in the latest version of fzf

Output of fzf --version

0.65.2

OS

• [x] Linux
• [ ] macOS
• [ ] Windows
• [ ] Etc.

Shell

• [x] bash
• [ ] zsh
• [ ] fish

Problem / Steps to reproduce

When launching fzf on a Linux TTY with TERM=linux, fzf seems not capable of drawing a border around the list of files.

I can reproduce this by:

• booting into a Linux system
• jump to a TTY or not boot into a desktop manager
• run fzf --margin=1 --border=rounded
• see missing border (sometimes "replaced" by the characters which were drawn at the same positions before)

Screenshot of a qemu VM (but I can also reproduce this on actual hardware):

[junegunn]

I would try two things

1. See if --no-unicode helps.
2. Build the latest binary from the source and check if it fixes the problem. (see 2a92c7d792b45112ab82eef0be2aa11038e6185d)

[fsc0]

$ fzf --version 0.65.2 (ab407c46)

$ uname -r 6.12.51_1

I couldn't reproduce the issue. I can see the straight border lines, but not the rounded corners ╭╮╰╯. However, I can see the sharp border corners with --border sharp (┌┐└┘). And --no-unicode works as expected, falling back to ASCII borders just like in desktop environments.

[Zocker1999NET]

• FYI: I’m also running Linux 6.12.51.
• adding --no-unicode does not change anything, the output still looks the same
• When building the newest commit (ab407c46) with Nix, it at least shows an actual border, but the corners do not look rounded compared to executed in a desktop environment: But also visible in that screenshot is that the margin does not get cleared for some reason (see lower left corner).

[fsc0]

• adding --no-unicode does not change anything, the output still looks the same

What was your command with --no-unicode option? Cause when I used below command on my TTY, --no-unicode works as expected.

fzf --no-unicode --margin 1 --border rounded

But also visible in that screenshot is that the margin does not get cleared for some reason (see lower left corner).

I also confirm this margin issue happens.

[Zocker1999NET]

I do not remember, but I now used yours and got the same result:

with fzf 0.65.2 as provided by nixpkgs (just in case of a typo, this shows the fzf I ran above from history):

[fsc0]

I see, since we're testing this issue almost same condition, except I'm using Void Linux and you are using NixOS. I'm just wondering how other major distros handle this issue.

[eabase]

Why are you using $TERM=linux? This is for non-gui use. You should be using: xterm (16-colors) or xterm-256color.

What does curl wttr.in show you?

[Zocker1999NET]

Why are you using $TERM=linux? This is for non-gui use.

This is the default on NixOS when being on a TTY (i.e. I have not configured this myself). I would say that this is non-gui.

You should be using: xterm (16-colors) or xterm-256color.

Interestingly, when setting xterm explicitly, I see no borders (but also no invalid characters on its place instead). And when setting xterm-256color explicitly, the borders looks as expected.

What does curl wttr.in show you?

The output is colorful and horizontal & vertical arrows are rendered correctly. Only diagonal arrows seem not be rendered correctly.

(I tested this all on a real machine now because I was not able to quickly spin up a VM, hence I cannot provide good screenshots.)