On Sat, 13 May 2000, maximum entropy wrote:
> but when I run screen, the backspace key starts
> sending "^[[3~", which is driving me completely nuts.

Screen is mapping control codes from one terminal type to another.  
The problem depends on the termcap capabilities for the terminal type
that you are using outside screen, the capabilities for the terminal
type that is emulated inside screen, and on the version of screen.  
From inside screen, do "<control-A>:bindkey" and "<control-A>:bindkey
-d" to find out what is getting mapped to the bad escape sequence, and
then tell screen to delete the bad mapping.

When I had a similar problem, putting "bindkey -d -k kb" in my
.screenrc file fixed it.

--apb (Alan Barrett)