wacky kernel question

[Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>]

I've been using linux for years and years, but I have never figured this
odd little corner out. Perhaps someone here will know.

If you type when the kernel is booting up, it echos to the screen.
That's normal for linux of course. The interesting behavior that
puzzles me is that if you hit the backspace key, it pops the letter that
it is backspacing over off of the stack, and prints it. Some / and \
characters are printed too around what you typed.

So, if I type:

Joey he_

Then backspace back two spaces, I see:

Joey he\eh/_

Then if I finish up by typing 'Hess', it looks like:

Joey he\eh/Hess_

Finally, if I mash down on backspace to delete it all, I see:

Joey he\eh/Hess\sseH yeoJ/_

Anyone know why this happens? It's a very interesting way to handle
backspacing, to say the least. It doesn't often matter, since there is
little point to type at the kernel while it's booting, unless you are
extremely bored during a long fsck. :-)

-- 
see shy jo