GNU screen: Backspace thinks it's delete

[unless]

When I open GNU Screen, my backspace key doesn't work... It behaves like delete.

I tried adding the following line to my .screenrc...

bindkey -k kb stuff "177"

... But once I do that, I just get "177" echoed to the cmd line/screen every time I hit ^H (which is how I've been backspacing since the backspace key began its identity crisis).

"stty -a" outputs the following info (be it from within screen or not):

speed 38400 baud; rows 14; columns 144; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
eol2 = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W;
lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;
-parenb -parodd cs8 -hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal -crtscts
-ignbrk -brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr icrnl ixon -ixoff
-iuclc -ixany -imaxbel
opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0
isig icanon iexten echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop -echoprt
echoctl echoke

This is driving me nuts. I'm tired of seeing "Wuff Wuff!" every time I hit the backspace key.

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

[levity]

i have this problem too and don't know how to handle it either. what's even weirder is that a lot of "terminal graphics" (ncurses?) applications display messed-up. so far i've found problems with aptitude and w3m. the corruption only happens when i'm inside screen.

i've used screen on a bunch of different platforms, and ubuntu is the first i've encountered to show either of these problems.

[HermanAB]

Hmmm, have you tried:
$ stty sane

Cheers,

Herman
http://www.aerospacesoftware.com/linuxhowtos.html

[levity]

Thanks for the suggestion, but that doesn't seem to change anything.

[dare2dreamer]

I've had several programs that run in screen get sorted out by the following:

export LANG=C

You might give it a shot. If it works, you can add it to .bashrc

[zojas]

no dice. man, this is annoying.

[zojas]

to expand on my last comment a bit:

I use zsh, and have it set to use vim-style command line editing rather than the default (emacs-style?)

when I'm in a shell in xterm or Konsole but not in screen, backspace works fine.

when I'm in a shell inside screen in konsole or on one of the text consoles, it also works fine.

but when I'm in a shell inside screen attached to xterm, hitting the backspace key backs up the cursor one position and puts me in command mode. if I hit backspace again, the character the cursor is sitting on top of is deleted, and the cursor backs up one more position. so the cursor ends up sitting on top of a character. it doesn't matter if I create the screen session in the xterm or merely attach to an already existing screen session on the xterm.

[zojas]

found my problem: in /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, there is a 'debian customizations' section.

in there, they have this line:

*backarrowKeyIsErase: true

I simply added this line to my ~/.Xdefaults to turn that off:

*backarrowKeyIsErase: false

then ran

xrdb ~/.Xdefaults

launched a new xterm, re-attached to screen, and the backspace key worked as it should!!

[zojas]

normally I will attach to screen in an xterm.

I have recently found that if I have to type input to a program, the backspace key won't work. like if I type 'cat > /tmp/file', then type some text and hit backspace, it just echoes a ^H character.

however, if I attach to screen inside konsole (the kde terminal), the backspace works fine when typing to cat.

backspace works fine with either terminal when typing to the shell directly.

[hayalci]

A simple solution from http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/sc.../msg00048.html

Set the TERM variable to screen before running screen.

TERM=screen screen

You can define an alias in your ~/.bashrc file like

alias screen='TERM=screen screen'