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Re: Backspace


On 6/20/2012 11:35 AM, Andrew DeFaria wrote:
Have you ever had the backspace key not go backward on character erasing the
previous character in Windows programs? Neither have I.

This has been bothering me for a while so... I have properly set stty erase
^h and from the bash command line backspace works as expected. But I often
find places where this setting is not honored. I have an example. If I type
less <filename> and at the less prompt I type "/' to find a string, but then
make a mistake and hit backspace I get ^? instead. But ^h works. Why? Even
the man page for less says that backspace is supposed to delete the
character to the left of the cursor but instead I just get ^?.

I see the same thing if I set stty erase (in bash) as you did and start a new shell (bash again) from it. Of course, the parent shell outputs ^? for any press of backspace. This behavior is the same for bash started from a command prompt and from mintty.

Beyond personal preference, is there a reason that you don't just take the
default (i.e. don't set stty erase)?  That works for me.

--
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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