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Why does "^?" appears when using read command with -n argument?

This is the small shell script I wrote :

#!/bin/bash

echo "Tell me something"
read -n 1000 text

But when the -n argument is used, I cannot erase my typos as using backspace results in inserting "^?" into the input.

Example input :

t^?This is my ans^?wer

My question here is why does using read with or without the -n argument results in different behaviors and how can I use read with the -n argument so I could normally use backspace ?

Solution

  • Apparently -n disables Readline, which is normally on by default when stdin is interactive. Use -e to explicitly enable it.

    read -n 1000 -e text