On Fri, Jul 24, 2026 at 08:22:46PM +0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
I saw this mentioned by tsp on #mutt. Apparently <delete> is bound to OP_EDITOR_BACKSPACE. I never noticed because I just hit ctrl-d instinctly instead of reaching over to the delete key!<delete> has been set to delete backwards since the initial git commit. I believe this was related to the awkward era of 'stty erase' setting 30 years ago to get del/backspace working properly. I think we're past that, aren't we? Change it to delete forward by default.
Thanks everyone for the feedback and the interesting discussion about the history of the keys and mappings. I've reread all the emails, and thought about it this week.
I think most participants are in favor of, or at least lean towards, changing the <delete> key to delete forward, and recognize that this is standard expected behavior now. New mutt users will be confused by the current default behavior in mutt's line editor. So I've decided I will make the change.
Jim and Claus, I respect that this decision is annoying to some older users. But I think there does come a point where even older programs should make "default" changes as time passes. This time, I'll ask existing users who want the <delete> key to delete backwards to make a config change in their .muttrc:
bind editor <delete> backspace for the benefit of new users and current expectations. -- Kevin J. McCarthy GPG Fingerprint: 8975 A9B3 3AA3 7910 385C 5308 ADEF 7684 8031 6BDA
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