My question has been answered. The problem was simply due to my bad edits of .bashrc. It has been resolved by a re-edit of the PS1 character string as shown in this snippet:
Here is my original Q Recalling previous commands in bash using the up/down arrows often responds with confusing text e.g. mixes half of commands together. Here's an example where I'm trying to recall previous dpkg command (by up arrow):
If I then use backspace key it doesn't delete duplicate chars, resulting in this:
This mostly occurs after entering a number of long commands then trying to roll back to a prior command.
In case it's relevant, I am using a shorter prompt. See attached image showing my edits for PS1 in bashrc:

Here are a few more examples:
How can this be fixed?
