backspace and delete keys behavior

[Malcolm Kay]

On Sunday 01 August 2004 03:51, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> On 2004-07-31 18:43, Mark Ovens <marko at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >Ion-Mihai Tetcu wrote:
> >>On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 14:30:59 +0100 Mark Ovens <marko at freebsd.org> wrote:
> >>> To implement this in a running X session type this in an xterm
> >>>
> >>> xmodmap -e "keysym Delete = 0x04"
> >>>

The default code produced by the Delete key and interpretation by X is fine.
Xterm produces the standard ANSI sequence "^[[3~" as it should and this is 
encoded in termcap for xterm as delete character. And this will work as 
expected for many applications working within an xterm window. The problem 
comes about that the shell does not honour this termcap entry.

Don't fool with xmodmap; it will work against you in applications -- just 
bind the key sequence in your shell (tcsh?)
$  bindkey "^[[3~" delete-char

I guess it would not be too difficult to extract the correct string from
termcap so that it worked for all (most) terminals but most now use the 
standard ANSI sequences so it is probably not worth the effort.

Malcolm