Re: Backspace/Delete Issues?

[Buddy Burden]

Aaron,

> I'm having issues using backspace and delete from within screen.
> Backspace works fine in the shell running inside screen (bash), but
> not at all in most other contexts, the most important of which is
> screen itself  ...

Yeah, these are hideously frustrating problems.  Any decent modern shell (bash and tcsh at a minimum) tries to be 
accomodating by accepting either ^H or ^? as a backspace.  Unfortunately, that tends to cover up the problem.  Since 
your backspace works at the shell prompt, you assume it works.  But, alas, it doesn't.

One of the simplest ways to solve it is to add a line like this to your login startup script (for bash, e.g., 
.bash_profile):

        stty erase XX

where XX is either ^H or ^?.  If you're using vi, you would hit Ctrl-V, then hit your backspace and just go with 
whatever it sticks in there.  (If you're using emacs or nano or somesuch, you'll have to figure out what the equivalent 
is.  Of course, if your backspace is as broken as it sounds like, the whole Ctrl-V thing may be unnecessary anyway.)

The downside to this is a) if you log in to this box via multiple methods, changing the terminal settings in this way 
might fix one and break another, and b) this setting may not carry over into subshells (su/sudo, newgrp, :sh in vi, 
etc).  But it's fairly easy and worth a try.

Good luck.


                -- Buddy