mutt terminfo

SYNOPSYS

My beloved mail client mutt throws a ‘key not bound’ error at me when hit Backspace to scroll my message up a line.

UPDATES

• 2013-11-13
  • I forgot to precise that I’m exclusively using terminology, and since this patch, that trick is no longer needed.
• 2022-09-27
  • Since this patch there’s an option called “BackArrow sends Del” to choose between issuing ‘\b’ or ‘\177’

RELATED

• luckily we have complete info on the subject (Consistent BackSpace and Delete Configuration)
• infocmp (1)
• tic (1)

PROCEDURE

what we want (sed or grep fun)

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$ infocmp | grep -oE  'kbs=[^,]+'
kbs=\177
$ infocmp | sed -ne 's/.*\(kdch1=[^,]\+\).*/\1/p'
kdch1=\E[3~

how to fix

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infocmp | sed 's/kbs=^H/kbs=\\177/' | sed 's/kdch1=\\177/kdch1=\\E[3~/' > terminfo
tic -x terminfo