UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

So I am set up on a new box for work here and I have a frustrating preference issue. Whenever I hit backspace, it deletes a whole word instead of a single character. I understand that this is generally the functionality of hitting ctrl-backspace. I tried googling for a solution and dabbled in my .profile and .bashrc files a bit but I have yet to come up with a fix for this. Does anyone know how to correct this?

---------- Post updated at 01:54 PM ---------- Previous update was at 11:13 AM ----------

I probably should have specified that I am running bash

It is a problem with tty settings - how bash reads keystrokes from the terminal.

Look for the word "erase" followed by some goofy character(s) in the output of:

Code:

stty -a

You want that to be "erase ^H"

If it does not:
1. run this from the command line

Code:

stty erase ^H

2. add the same thing to your .profile

That fixed it thank you.

In this case it was ^H, but it depends on which terminal or emulator you are using. It can also be ^?
I usually just type "stty erase " and then press the backspace character. Then you always get the right character for the command.