Ryan Campbell Cunningham wrote: > I would like to request that Bash delete the character > immediately preceding a '#', provided the '#' > ... > (The request was inspired by an article in the seventh > edition of the UNIX Programmer's Manual. This feature > is not required by POSIX, but came from the traditional > Bourne shell.)
This isn't a feature of the shell but of the tty driver. It still exists. It is still possible to use it today exactly as it was used in Unix V7. $ stty -a | grep --color erase intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>; $ stty erase '#' $ stty -a | grep --color erase intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = #; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>; Feel free to try it. You can also customize the behavior of your bash libreadline by setting the backward-delete-char key binding. Place the following in your $HOME/.inputrc file for example. "#" backward-delete-char > I would like to request that Bash delete the character > immediately preceding a '#', provided the '#' > > * does not begin a new word, > * is not included in any quoted string or variable, > * is not preceded by a '\', and > * is only found in an interactive command line (not > in a script* or Bash initialization argument). > > An exception: If the character immediately preceding > is also a '#', Bash should skip backward to the previous > non-'#' character and delete as much characters as the > number of consecutive '#' characters after them in the > same word. Oh my, isn't that a complicated set of rules! That is bound to cause trouble. Not good. Plus that isn't how it worked in V7 days. Bob
