Re: Strange-Dangerous behaviour in Cygwin (and/or RXVT)

[ericblake at comcast dot net (Eric Blake)]

> I have tried your code "stty erase ^H" in .bash_profile and as I thinked
> it works for standard bash shell and xterm BUT NOT for RXVT in which, now,
> BKSPACE is dead. In others words RXVT wants "stty erase ^?" as in
> /etc/profile.

The trick is to set `stty erase' to whatever your current shell outputs when
you type [ctrl-v][backspace].  As has been pointed out, stty defaults to ^H
as the erase character, and the stock distributions of the cygwin, rxvt, and
xterm terminals likewise default to ^H for backspace with no additional
modifications.  With both rxvt and xterm (but not the cygwin terminal), it is
possible to change backspace to output ^? instead of ^H, and it appears
that somehow you have swapped rxvt to use ^?.  Rxvt is also annoying in
that it defaults $TERM to xterm, instead of the more accurate $TERM of
rxvt, which makes a case statement on $TERM difficult if rxvt and xterm can't
agree on which character is printed on backspace.  Pick the shell you like
most and stick with it, rather than trying to bounce between all three, then
you will only have to get your stty settings correct once.

> I remain in the opinion that some recents upgrades have changed something
> (env. var., dlls) in cygwin conf.. Previously, also with this /etc/profile
> (3.2-1, 3.1-4, 3.0-1) with "stty erase ^?" all worked fine.
> 
> For example, termcap upgrade (Apr 22) can have some influence?
> Or the rxvt package itself (Apr 10)?

I don't know what caused your change, but I am not seeing it with the
latest and greatest of all packages from cygwin.  See if your ~/.Xdefaults
has a line about Rxvt*backspacekey.  If it does, you can delete it, or
change it to one of:
# Cygwin default of ^H
Rxvt*backspacekey: \008
# Alternate, backspace is ^?
Rxvt*backspacekey: \177

--
Eric Blake



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