OT: What does ^H^H^H mean?

[mattygfunk]

Hey everyone,
What does ^H^H^H mean?

I've done my google search and the scripts omit the ^ characters
returning "H H" results. I see this referanced everywhere but nowhere
I can find will give it in an obvious context. Google groups will save
me!

Matthew Goodwin

[Lurch]

mattygfunk wrote:

From the jargon file:

...
There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the text

Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman,
he's visiting from corporate HQ.

reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...", with irony
emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a print representation for a
backspace, and was actually very visible on old-style printing terminals.
As the text was being composed the characters would be echoed and printed
immediately, and when a correction was made the backspace keystrokes would
be echoed with the string '^H'. Of course, the final composed text would
have no trace of the backspace characters (or the original erroneous text).
...

Hope this helped...

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[mattygfunk]

Thanks Lurch that cleared it up for me. I'll be in on the joke from now on.
Cheers
Matthew Goodwin