Numerous error/warning messages in shell output

Support Bug Reports
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Whenever cursor runs a shell command, it produes

_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e
_encode:25: command not found: -e

as output. I haven’t been able to determine what’s causing this behavior. Running cursor on a macos sequoia 15.6.1

Steps to Reproduce

It occurs anytime cursor needs to do a run command and I hit run

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 1.6.27 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.99.3
Commit: d750e54bba5cffada6d7b3d18e5688ba5e944ad0
Date: 2025-09-17T20:21:17.042Z (4 days ago)
Electron: 34.5.8
Chromium: 132.0.6834.210
Node.js: 20.19.1
V8: 13.2.152.41-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

2

Hey, thanks for the report. We’ll look into it.

3

Any workarounds?

4

For me, this error was caused by a missing HEXDUMP_PATH environment variable that’s required by a zsh shell function called _encode.

When Cursor spawns a zsh shell, it’s loading a shell function _encode (likely from your .zshrc or a plugin like oh-my-zsh/prezto) that uses $HEXDUMP_PATH to perform URL encoding operations. When this variable isn’t set, the function tries to execute an empty command followed by arguments, resulting in the error:

`_encode:25: command not found: -e`

This happens because line 25 of the _encode function contains:

hex=“$(echo -n “$__char” | $HEXDUMP_PATH -e ‘1 1 “!%02x”’)”

When $HEXDUMP_PATH is empty, it becomes just -e '1 1 "!%02x"' with no actual command.

Solution

Add this line to your ~/.zshrc file:

export HEXDUMP_PATH=/usr/bin/hexdump

1 Like
5

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