On Sat, 21 Jan 2006, Jurjen Oskam might have said:

> Hi there,
>
> Some time ago, while using dsmadmc (on AIX 5.3) to do some
> filespace-maintenance, I noticed that dsmadmc does something
> interesting when it asks you if you really want to delete a particular
> filespace.
>
> When you enter a DELETE FILESPACE command, you're normally asked
> if you really want to delete the filespace, with a prompt indicating
> that dsmadmc want a Y or a N for an answer.
>
> I noticed that dsmadmc doesn't care what you type, as long as the first
> character is either a Y or a N (or the lower case variant). For example,
> typing "nyes" will not delete the filespace, typing "yno" *will* delete
> the filespace.
>
> While this is debatable (IMHO), this gets nasty when you combine this
> with how dsmadmc handles other input, like, say, Backspace. I have
> tried on two types of Unix terminal emulators: PuTTY (xterm, send Backspace
> as Ctrl-?), and the HMC supplied virtual terminal (vt320).
>
> When entering commands, keys like the cursor keys and backspace work
> and do what you'd expect. Backspace deletes the character left of the
> cursor. If I type: "q pg<backspace>r<enter>", I get the output of the
> QUERY PROCESS command, as expected. However, when I enter a DELETE
> FILESPACE command and dsmadmc asks me if I'm really sure, and I type:
> "y<backspace>n<enter>", the deletion *will* occur, i.e.: the filespace
> is *gone*. Depending on the terminal I've seen "y^Hn" or just plain "n"
> (which is particularly nasty), but once you've typed the initial "y"
> there's no way except Ctrl-C to prevent the deletion.
>
> I then changed (on the PuTTY) session my TERM environment variable to
> "dumb". This caused the Backspace-key to work as generally expected
> when I was asked if I was sure to delete the given filespace. However,
> it *also* caused the Backspace key to not work at all during normal
> command entering.
>
>
> I am aware that Unix and terminal emulation can be a tricky issue, but
> I believe there *is* a problem in dsmadmc in this case, because it
> treats the same keypress (Backspace) differently in different parts of
> the program. Also, the fact that dsmadmc only looks at the first character
> of input when asking a Y/N-question, is IMHO not quite correct.
>
> What do you think?
>
> --
> Jurjen Oskam
>

Have you tried changing your terminal emulation and the TERM variable?

Mike