Annoying screen backspace problem

[Paul Lussier]

Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> writes:

> So really, there are two problems which have lead to the sad state
> of affairs bollixing up the backspace key.  One is bad coding
> practices -- programs which assume that ^H is supposed to be
> backspace, or that ^? is, instead of letting the terminal driver do
> the translation as intended.  The second is lazy or ignorant system
> administrators who have misconfigured termcap/terminfo databases.

And the second has largely been relegate to ignorant/lazy system
*vendors*, as most sysadmins nowadays don't even know the termcap db
even exists!  In my 10+ years as a sysadmin, I've *never* had to touch
the termcap db (unless I was completely replacing it).  If it's been
horked, it came that way from the vendor :)

> Anyway, I think it's much better than it used to be.  =8^)

I agree.  Years ago it wasn't uncommon to have the "fix" this problem
by replacing the entire termcap.  SunOS had it mucked pretty well, as
did early Solaris and Ultrix (don't recall about True64).  I vaguely
recall having trouble on early RH systems when connecting to these
other systems as well, but linux-to-linux was (obviously) okay.  Where
I notice the problem most now is, as Derek points out, in screen,
which I use extensively.  But since adding the stty ek line, I haven't
noticed the problem.

Actually, I didn't even notice it in screen shells, but when I invoke
emacs.  The stty ek works fine in that my backspace key is backspace,
but that also maps to ^H, which in emacs is C-h, which is used for
accessing emacs help.  This gets to be a pain, since rather than using
C-h f or C-h k to read the help for a function or keybinding, I now
have to use M-x describe-function or M-x describe-key.  

-- 

Seeya,
Paul