As I recall, ^H means Backspace. I generated it by pressing CTRL+V, CTRL+H.So the ^H should remove the last character, as it is the same as Backspace and it should act just as if I pressed Backspace at this position.Why the does the output of echo abc^H remain abc and not ab?
Why doesn't `echo abc^H` just print `ab`?
shell;terminal;special characters
backspace is only moving the cursor backward.backspace (or delete or whatever character depending on the configuration) deletes the last printed character only when these conditions are met:it is typed on the keyboard, not a command output like echo in your example the terminal device is in cooked mode (the usual case)If you want to erase the c in your example, you need to overwrite it by another character, for example:echo abc^H 