BETA4 Vi backspace behavior

[Jason Andresen]

Bob Willcox wrote:

>On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 06:40:41AM -0400, Mike B wrote:
>  
>
>>Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Do things work properly in vim (preferrably ports/editors/vim-lite) but
>>>not native /usr/bin/vi, or are they generally horked all around?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>You all are right about the behavior of vi, but the backspace in vim is 
>>definitely broken. I've tried using the :fixdel command and also 
>>remapping the key with :map but the result is always the same. Perhaps 
>>this is a bug or incompatability that has arisen in vim; every other 
>>text editor seems to work flawlessly. Thanks
>>    
>>
>
>FWI, all versions of vi that I've used over the past 20 years (I only
>use vim when using Linux) had this behavior wrt the backspace key
>(backing over but no erasing). This has been mostly on on AIX, ESIX, and
>FreeBSD. So for me anyway, it's the "norm."
>  
>

AFAIK, the "backspace as a motion key" behavior dates all the way back 
to teletypes, because they were just typewriters with modems and they 
didn't have any way of actually deleting characters on the line.  I 
think this is also where the use of "x" as a delete character comes 
from, people actually x-ing out words on their teletype.  

Look on the bright side, your editor may have bizarre commands, but it 
will still work even if you're stuck in the most primitive of editing 
environments.