Strange terminal behaviour

[Nikhil Nair]

On Wed, 9 Jan 2013, staticsafe wrote:

> On 09/01/2013 1:44 PM, Nikhil Nair wrote:
>> Hi there,
>>
>> I'm a recent convert to Ubuntu, using it on a remote server; the
>> Linux-based server I have at home runs a very old version of Debian.  I
>> connect from a Windows XP-based laptop running SecureCRT and/or PuTTY.
>> I'm using a regular text-based terminal - not X Windows.
>>
>> I'm getting a strange problem with non-VT100 characters being used on
>> the terminal, despite the TERM environment variable automatically being
>> set to "vt100".  It's odd since, with identical Windows terminal setups
>> when connecting to both machines, I get the issue on the Ubuntu machine
>> but not on the Debian one.
>>
>> The easiest way to trigger this is by attempting to compile a C program
>> with undefined references (e.g. a variable that wasn't declared), using
>> gcc.  The single quotes around the variable name should be written as
>> ordinary apostrophes, and that's what happens on the Debian box; but on
>> the Ubuntu one, it's attempting to do something fancier: on PuTTY, they
>> both look the same (they come out as an A circumflex...), whereas with
>> SecureCRT, they're both displayed as three characters - the opening one
>> is A circumflex, Euro, tilde, and the closing one is A circumflex, Euro,
>> trademark.
>>
>> This sort of thing is more than a slight nuissance to me, as I'm blind,
>> and these weird symbols mess with my screen reader.  They're even more
>> of a problem in ncurses-style interfaces (several of which are used by
>> configure scripts when installing packages...).
>>
>> All I've checked about the terminal setup, as yet, is the TERM
>> environment variable, with is set to "vt100" on both machines.  I don't
>> know enough about this sort of thing to know what to check next, or
>> where to look up a solution in the documentation, so any help would be
>> much appreciated!
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Nikhil.
>>
>>
>
> Can you give us the output of the `locale` command on the Debian and the
> Ubuntu box?

Sure.  I wasn't familiar with the locale command until just now, and only 
peripherally aware of the LC_* environment variables.  Results:

On the Ubuntu box:

LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

On the Debian box:

LANG=en_GB
LC_CTYPE="en_GB"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB"
LC_TIME="en_GB"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB"
LC_PAPER="en_GB"
LC_NAME="en_GB"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_GB"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB"
LC_ALL=


Do I take it that it's that "UTF-8" bit that's doing the mischief?

I've just switched the character encoding setting in SecureCRT, when 
connecting to the Ubuntu box, from default to UTF-8.  And, now, the 
apostrophes appear to be working correctly.  Much appreciated.

Is that, indeed, the best solution, would you suggest?

Cheers,

Nikhil.