This code was originally used to mark deleted characters on punched tape, since any character could be changed to all ones by punchingholes everywhere. If a character was punched erroneously, punching out all seven bits caused this position to be ignored or deleted. In hexadecimal this is 7F to rubout 7 bits. This character could also be used as padding to slow down printing after newlines though the all-zero NUL was more often used. The Teletype Model 33 provided a key labelled to punch this character, and did not provide a key that produced the Backspace character. Therefore, a number of less-expensive computer systems that used Teletypes used this key to ignore the previous mis-typed character. Video terminals designed to replace the teletype then had to place a key that produced this code where Backspace would be expected, in particular products from Digital Equipment Corporation. On VT100 compatible terminals, this is the character generated by the key labeled. On later terminals such as the VT510 the key is labeled and by default sent DEL but could be setup to send BS. Other terminals designed for systems that did not have a history of using Teletypes would usually make a key at this position send BS, leading to much confusion. Unix in particular had an annoying problem that it could only be programmed to erase the previous character for one of these, thus requiring the user to reconfigure the terminal driver for each different brand of terminal. Depending on the type of terminal the designer used, software would sometimes make the shortcuts or do something, even though these sent the same code as BS and DEL, assuming the backspace key was sending the other code. A key marked that sends BS is by far the most common on modern terminals and emulators. To make sure they don't delete backwards, the key marked "Delete" on many terminals do not send DEL, instead sending an escape sequence such as ^3~.
Current use
operating systems can still use it as the stty| character, i.e. to delete the previous character in the line mode. The terminal driver still cannot be programmed to take both this and Backspace, one must be chosen, however most modern programs bypass this and use libraries such as readline which accepts both codes. Most Unix terminal emulators can be configured to send either Delete or Backspace when the backspace key is pressed. DOS/Windows never used this character in any way. The BIOS keyboard driver produced Backspace when the backspace key was typed and Null with scan code 5316 when the delete key was typed. In Windows the delete key maps to VK_DELETE. EGA/VGA fonts, as fonts used by Win32 console, usually have the "house" symbol ⌂ at 127 code point, see Code page 437 for details. However, its legacy can be seen in parts of the Windows operating system: as an example, in Microsoft Notepad used to insert the delete character until it was changed in 2018 to make it delete the previous word.
