I'm currently developing an ncurses application, and my terminal often ends up in a quite weird state. Usually, the backspace key does not work:
$ ls -xx^?^?
The `reset` command does help a lot, but not in this case. The solution is this
$ stty erase ^?
Instead of typing `^?`, I hit the backspace key. I also created an alias:
alias r="reset && stty erase ^?"
(Again, instead of typing `^?`, i hit the backspace key.)
ncurses, here I come!