Hi
I'm building a simple application using ncurses in Mandriva 2008. I have a simple text user interface asking the user to enter an ASCII string, and then I'm using wgetch() to parse the string, checking if each character is an ASCII character using isascii(). I'm also checking for special characters such as enter and backspace.

I'm using KEY_BACKSPACE to detect backspace. Its ASCII value seems to be 263, but when I test my app using Mandriva (Konsole), backspace seems to be ASCII value 127 instead, so the backspace is never detected. Why is there a discrepancy between the 2?

Also, I've tested the app on another self compiled Linux kernel(2.6.22.19) with busybox. In this environment, backspace is ASCII value 263, so KEY_BACKSPACE works. However, the "Break" key, as well as Alt-Break, Shift-Break, Ctrl-Break, seems to convert to 2 ASCII characters - "[P". This doesn't happen in Mandriva. What's wrong here? Why is break an ASCII character when it's clearly not? Has this something to do with the character set and/or termcap/terminfo or something?

Thanks.

Yes, it's most permanently set in /etc/termcap or terminfo, but you can edit those if you want

vt100|vt100-am|dec vt100 (w/advanced video):\
:am:bs:ms:xn:xo:\
:co#80:it#8:li#24:vt#3:\
:@8=\EOMO=\E[%dB:K1=\EOq:K2=\EOr:K3=\EOs:K4=\EOp:K5=\EOn:\

This system assume bs=^? for the vt100 terminal setting -- so

... etc

You change it at the command line with

stty erase ctl-v [backspace] (define it to be what you want no matter what)

or

tput kbs (make sure it's set correctly for the terminal type

Hope that helps

, Mike

Hi,

Thanks, but that didn't work. I changed the erase using "stty erase ^h" and now in the console whenever I press backspace the characters "^?" show up instead. The setting also had no effect in the ncurses application. Backspace is still being translated into ASCII value 127.

Hey There,

Try doing [ctl]-v and then pressing the backspace key and you should get

stty erase ^?

You have to do ctl-v first and then hit the actual button for this to work. It's just one character, not really "caret" followed by "h"

Hope that helps

, Mike