Gregory's Server@b0rk @mjd Today, X on Linux has a 'BackSpace' keysym and a 'Delete' keysym, generated by their respective keyboard keys, but I believe that all terminal emulators map both of them to DEL by default (xterm and gnome-terminal certainly do). Things like browsers tend to make the big BackSpace key delete characters to the left of the cursor (what you expect) and the 'Delete' key delete to the right, which can be a surprise.
@cks @b0rk @mjd With Unix caught in the middle of the schism, yeah. I had a small part in resolving things: at a Usenix 'ask the BSD team' session, I stood up and suggested that they deal with it by having two erase characters in the tty driver. And they said, Ok! Thus was born erase2.