Unusual backspace behavior in Mac terminal
Solution 1
Running stty erase ^H
should fix it, as that is the current control sequence being sent as a backspace.
Solution 2
Make sure the backspace character in the Unix system matches the one in your Mac. If you're using control-H for backspace in the Mac, then use that in the Unix system (stty erase "^H"). If you're using DELETE for backspace in the Mac (shows as "^?" when you do an "stty -a" command), then use that in the Unix system (stty erase "^?").
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Peter Mortensen
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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Peter Mortensen over 1 year
I'm trying to figure out how to get SSH sessions to work how I want using the terminal application on Mac OS X.
I'm used to using PuTTY on Windows, where backspace means backspace.
When I press delete/backspace on Mac it deletes the character following the cursor instead of the one before.
I turned on Delete sends Ctrl + H, and that works most of the time, but sometimes it just shows on the screen as
^H
. This is typically at prompts from some custom Python scripts on the box I log into. This doesn't happen with PuTTY on Windows.BTW I'm logging into a Ubuntu Linux server running OpenSSH.
What do I need to do so that backspace is consistently backspace?
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Nawaz almost 7 yearsHow to type
^?
on Mac?^
followed by?
.... ? -
Marnix A. van Ammers almost 7 yearsAlthough "^?" represents the single DELETE character, when doing the stty command, the "^" and "?" will have to be typed separately, one after the other and put in quotes.