[techtalk] MAJOR newbie question

[Samantha Jo Moore]

The issue of whether the backspace key will work or not depends on the 
function calls being used by the client program to read the keyboard.

If the program uses the normal fgets(), gets(), or any other one in that
family then the translations set for your specific terminal should work
fine.  If the program uses the ioctl() family of calls then you will need
to figure out what key combination (if any) turns out to be what the 
client program understands as backspace.

The reason this works this way is that the ioctl() functions bypass the
stream handling functions which do all the key translations specified for
your terminal, while going directly to the keyboard.  This is also the 
reason why you can't redirect input to some of these programs either,
for example a getty.

Samantha Jo Moore
CTO - The Tahoe Group, Inc.
http://www.thetahoegroup.com
sjmoore at thetahoegroup.com

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