UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, I was just wondering how to distinguish between the two terms:

1. Terminal emulator (vt100, vt220 and so on)
2. shell command line

Then i decided to conclude myself that these 2 are very equivalent. am I right? this actually came to my mind when I was using my HP-UX terminal.

I am connecting to a HP-UX server using SSH (putty). but it is always very difficult for me to interact with this terminal. I checked the terminal:

Code:

$ echo $TERM
vt100

this terminal is always like a vi editor, let's say I can't use the normal backspace for deletion, I should use x, or I should use the hjkl keys for arrows! this was really annoying for me and I decided to read more about this emulator. I went to my red hat box and check my terminal there and it gave me xterm. so I found out that this is about the differences between xterm and vt100. in xterm I can use key board keys very conveniently but in my HP-UX server I have really difficulties and is so annoying to work there.

can somebody give me some light to understand better about all these terminals? can I change my vt100 terminal to xterm and get rid of that stupid terminal? any comment would be appreciated.

Messi

Putty has settings for all of the things you need.
On the Putty configuration screen (Tree)

Code:

Select Terminal
            KeyBoard
               backspace

You have to match your settings there to what the UNIX terminal is set to.

Code:

stty -a

Will show you the erase character which is by default ctrl/[backspacekey]

Next, you are confusing what vi (vim or whatever) uses for erase versus what the interactive shell uses. They have nothing to do with each other really.

That is pretty much independent of your terminal setting. When you interact with the shell, the vt100 (terminal settings) do matter. vi lives in its own world.