Thanks Dave. The problem was entirely with my stty. Both gets and readline 
now work as expected. I got them working with "stty erase ^H"... The erase 
character was ^? and I never noticed that. Apparently bash doesn't use stty's 
erase setting for deleting characters... deleting things in command line 
works fine with either ^?or ^H as erase chars.

I have to shoot myself for being so stupid. My problem is never checking the 
obvious before searching for sources of trouble in more subtle areas.

Nikita.

On Wednesday 21 February 2001 00:59, you wrote:
> Nikita Proskourine <nop1 / cornell.edu> writes:
> > I get the following:
> >
> > adamant:~$ irb
> > irb(main):001:0> readline
> > This is a test^H^H^H^Hsimple test.
> > "This is a test\010\010\010\010simple test.\n"
> > irb(main):002:0> exit
> >
> > adamant:~$
>
> What does 'stty' show as your erase character?
>
>
> Dave

-- 
Nikita Proskourine / Cornell University
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love."
-- Albert Einstein