Why erase and kill characters do the same thing? Among the `stty -a` settings on my machine there are such as `erase = ^?; kill = ^U;`. The man page reports that erase CHAR CHAR will erase the last character typed kill CHAR CHAR will erase the current line But I found out the corresponding keyboard shortcuts effectively do the same thing, i.e. when I type `boo` at the terminal and then press `<ctrl>+U` or `<ctrl>+?` the line would be erased completely in both cases. So why the erase character does not erase only the last character?

I just tested this at my shell prompt and got similar results. However, closer examination shows an error.

`ctrl`+`/` (which you might think is ctrl-?) actually produces ctrl-_ which is typically bound to "undo". If you want ctrl-? you need to press `ctrl`+`shift`+`?`. You can test this by typing `ctrl`+`v` `ctrl`+`/`

Note that the stty command affects terminal editing in "cooked" mode where the undo key doesn't work. So my guess is that you are using a shell like bash that implements its own command line editing, which might honor the stty settings but doesn't have to and adds a lot of fancier editing keys as well.