Backspace

Jerry McAllister jerrymc at msu.edu
Sun Aug 12 16:34:56 PDT 2007


On Sun, Aug 12, 2007 at 01:31:36PM -0500, Derek Ragona wrote:

> At 10:54 PM 8/11/2007, d.Z. wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >I'm a new user to FreeBSD and Unix. I used Solaris 10 last week in
> >lab, and found there is a difference between them.
> >
> >When Solaris is installed, press backspace will give you ^H, you'll
> >have to "stty erase ^H" to solve this problem. But with FreeBSD 6.1,
> >when first installed, backspace is always bounded to erase last
> >character, even I have "stty erase ^?" and "stty erase2 ^?", backspace
> >still deletes last character input. Does any body know why is this
> >happening?
> 
> Solaris by default uses csh for user accounts.  The backspace key 
> assignment and for that matter, all key assignments are dependent on the 
> both the shell and terminal definition.  Reassigning keys is typical for 
> your shell's startup profile file .cshrc for csh and .bashrc for bash.
> 
> 
> >And strange thing is with default setting (before stty erase and
> >erase2 to ^?), when I use Emacs, C-h will give me back space, instead
> >of help. I know this is desirable for experts, but I'm really new so
> >just want to follow the instruction first.
> 
> Applications like the shell you use interpret the terminal definition and 
> may or may not use the same key assignments.  Most applications like the 
> shells in UNIX environments have startup files to customize the key 
> assignments and in the case of editors even define macros.

And those startup files are:

   For csh and tcsh  (tcsh is the most common one in FreeBSD)  
   the startup file is .cshrc  in one's home directory.  You can also
   create a system-wide one.

   For SH and bash it is .profile  and for them don't forget to export
   any variables.

////jerry

> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
>         -Derek
> 
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