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Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:05:27 -0400
From: "Larry Hall (Cygwin)" <reply-to-list-only-lh@cygwin.com>
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Subject: Re: Backspace
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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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