BSD new tty driver: ^W (werase)

[der Mouse]

In article <1221 at ark.cs.vu.nl>, maart at cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath) writes:
> Isn't it a good idea to let the ^W (word erase) command erase not
> only to the previous space, tab or begin of line, but also to the
> previous slash?

It might be a good idea to make it available as an option.  Probably
not as "the way it is done", because everyone who's gotten used to the
other way will scream.

> Haven't you made often a typo like the following?
> 	ls -l /usr/xpool/news/comp/unix/questions
> In csh the easiest way to recover is to type return, hit del
> and type ^x^s :-(

Seems like an argument for a good editing shell, like ksh, tcsh, or
mcsh (my own variant, incompatible with all the others and (-: of
course much better than any of them :-)).  I'd type
ESC b ESC b ESC b ESC b ESC b ^D s
and it'd be all fixed.

Actually, this is an argument for putting full-fledged line editing
into the tty driver (because people don't make mistakes only when
typing to the shell).  But given the current architecture of the
kernel, this is difficult to do right.  I guess it's time to redo the
kernel.  Hmm, this project is getting bigger!

					der Mouse

			uucp: mouse at mcgill-vision.uucp
			arpa: mouse at larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu