Andy Ball <andy.ball@earthlink.net> writes:

>    JB> Yes. And that key is expected to delete to the *left*
>      > of the cursor. :-)
> 
> Not by me, but then I imagine it depends on the application.

Back in Seventh Edition (late 70s), and maybe during part of Sixth
(earlier was # I think, for printing terminals), the standard erase
character was \0177, and everyone who used Unix expected it to delete
left.  Specifically, in other than raw mode, people expected the
computer to send BS SPACE BS and to remove the last recent character
from the input buffer.

I only became aware a Delete that deletes to the right much later,
with window systems, and perhaps not until PCs started doing that.   I
don't remember delete-to-right during the X10 days.

-- 
        Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>