Why is this bash prompt acting strangely/disappearing, and how do I fix it (OS X)?

Question

I admit that I use a somewhat long-winded bash prompt:

--(username)-(Wed April 01|12:00:00)--(~ $

Recently, I got the bright idea to change

Answer 1

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/053 -- I have a fancy prompt with colors, and now bash doesn't seem to know how wide my terminal is. Lines wrap around incorrectly.

By the way; for your reference; here's my PS1 which looks like this:
_{(source: lyndir.com)}

\[$reset$bold$green\]\u@\h\[$blue\] \W \[$red\]${?/#0/\[$green\]}\$\[$reset\]

Notice how I put all the color codes in $parameters to make it neater, but more importantly, because you should be using tput to generate them. See:

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/037 -- How can I print text in various colors?

I declare my color parameters in a utility script that gets sourced by my ~/.bashrc (and any scripts I write) which is called bashlib.

On a final note; put your PS1 definition in ~/.bashrc and don't export it. There's absolutely no reason why you should add your PS1 definition to the environment of any and all processes you spawn from your shell.