Backspace vs. Left Arrow

On some terminals, the Backspace and Left Arrow keys send the same hardware signal. If so, ACUCOBOL-GT's key naming rules will treat both as a (destructive) Backspace, because the host name takes precedence. You can deal with this situation in one of several ways; some possibilities are:

  1. If you do not use the Left Arrow key as anything other than an edit key, you can probably just use the defaults. You will not have the Left Arrow capability, but most users prefer to have destructive Backspace instead. Alternatively, if you prefer to have Left Arrow instead of destructive Backspace you can, with a KEYSTROKE variable, define the Backspace key to have the "Left" edit action.
  2. If you use the Left Arrow as an exception key, then you can leave the destructive backspace action on the Backspace key and also give it an exception code value. This will cause the Backspace key to act as a destructive backspace while the cursor is in an ACCEPT field. The Left Arrow exception value will be returned when the user backspaces off the left edge of the field.
  3. Finally, you can use operating system commands to assign the host's Backspace key to another key. This will then cause the Backspace key to be recognized as a Left Arrow key while the other key will take on the characteristics of the Backspace key. If you wish to do this, a common key to use as the alternate Backspace key is the Rub Out (or DEL) key.

Other combinations exist, but this should give you a general idea of ways to address this issue.