xterm & backspace key
If you’re using xterm and hitting the backspace key doesn’t do what you expect, add this to your .Xdefaults file:
xterm.*.backarrowKey: false
(Thanks, Kelly Felkins.) Another solution specific to Emacs is to add this to your .emacs file:
(define-key global-map "\010" 'backward-delete-char-untabify)
(Thanks, Ehud Karni.)