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That explains the convention of using repeated ^H in a post to show one deleting a word (typically what they really meant) and replacing it with something more
by u801e 4y ago
That explains the convention of using repeated ^H in a post to show one deleting a word (typically what they really meant) and replacing it with something more acceptable. Occasionally, I saw people use a single ^W instead for that purpose.
- mortehu 4y ago^H deletes a single character, while ^W deletes a whole word in many different programs, including those that use GNU readline (e.g. bash). Similarly, ^U commonly deletes the whole line, or from the cursor to the beginning of the line. ^U is particularly useful when you think you might have mistyped a password and there are no indicators about how many characters you've typed (e.g. ssh or sudo).
- layer8 4y agoOn Usenet, it was customary to use ^L (form feed) to hide spoilers, because text-mode readers would then blank the rest of the screen until you paged past the form feed.