How do I get my backspace and delete keys to work the way I want?

On unix, the stty command is generally used to set the mappings of terminal keys like the erase key, word erase key. Typically this done in the .login file with a line like:

   stty intr '^c' erase '^h' werase '^w' kill '^u'

This will map ctl-c to the interrupt character, backspace to the erase character ctl-w to the word erase character and ctl-u the the line kill character. If you prefer delete as your erase key replace the '^h' with '^?' in the above command.

Unfortunately the .logon file is not generally executed when you start an xterm on a given system. That is why the xterm program has a X-resource called ttyModes. If you load the following X resource in your server then these keys will be mapped this way for all systems you visit:

   XTerm*ttyModes: intr ^c erase ^h weras ^w kill ^u

This way you do not need to change your .login files on all systems on which you have accounts or concern yourself with conflicts in system defaults.

June 5, 1994