A strange character error recently appeared in my terminal, which was proven due to the terminal emulator. Normally, my home path in the shell prompt should be
# right one
user@host:~$
while it actually prompts as
# accidental one
user§host:ì$
To solve this error, run
reset
Refer this for more details.
Your terminal emulator is capable of multiple character sets, and it’s often the case when one accidentally dumps a binary to the terminal that somewhere in the binary is the character sequence that switches the terminal between output character sets.