Talk:Delete character

Invisible in pre-windows DOS?

Just from personal experience, this character was invisible in versions of DOS prior to Windows i.e. identical to a space, but with semantics similar to a normal character. I used to create filenames consisting of nothing but DEL characters, executed by batch files containing DEL characters. A casual user would see what appeared to be a blank filename and an empty batch file. Odysseus (talk) 06:59, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that you either incorrectly project invisibility to certain utilities to the entire DOS environment, or might confuse DEL with its high-bit-set analog \377 (0xFF), which matches your description and is mapped to non-breakable space in modern code pages. I remember myself creating and entering “⌂” (0x7F) subdirectory via API somewhere about 1988. It probably was blank in the output of DIR and so, but I certainly observed the house symbol in the command prompt. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Of the two choices, I'll say I was confusing it with 0xFF. Likely also confused with my Apple//e during a similar time period, which has a different DEL symbol as well Odysseus (talk) 21:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Confusing

The article states that "Most modern keyboards do not have a dedicated key to input the Delete character." I glance down at my desktop PC keyboard, and I see a Delete key; if pressing it does not generate a DEL (U+007F) character code, what code does it generate? The Delete key article is useless, because it does not describe what character code the key actually produces (is mapped to). — Loadmaster (talk) 21:15, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

I just ran xev on my Linux machine to look up the code of the Delete key and what did I find? Keycode 119, character U+007F. So looks like it does generate this character. Backspace generates U+0008. I don't have a machine with Windows installed so I can't check how does it work on Windows. It might depend on the system since keyboards don't generate ASCII / Unicode codes anymore, they generate key codes which get converted into characters by the system (in my case by xkb). All keys generate key codes, but not all keys generate characters, eg. pressing the Menu key gives me key code 135, but no character, pressing any modifier (Control, Shift, Alt...) also doesn't produce characters. Also editing an xkb layout to explicitly produce U+007F instead of whatever the Delete key produces doesn't seem to work, so who knows what is that sorcery... Kurogetsusai (talk) 15:31, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

This is referring to a key marked "Delete" that is not replacing the key marked "Backspace" on the keyboard. A delete key there (top right corner above the enter key) could very well produce 0x7f. But they are rare today. Spitzak (talk) 19:46, 13 October 2025 (UTC)