Features›Editing›Delete characters (DCH)

Delete characters (DCH)

Category: editing · Baseline: modern · Tags: ECMA-48 Standard, VT220 · Specification ↗

ESC [ N P

DCH deletes N characters at the cursor position, shifting subsequent characters to the left. The sequence is ESC [ N P (default N=1). Blank characters are inserted at the right margin to fill the vacated space. The complement of ICH (insert characters).

How this is testedautomated
Write "ABCDE", move to col 1, send \x1b[2P (DCH 2), verify "C" is now at col 0.

The same probe runs against headless backends (via Termless) and real terminal apps (via a daemon launched in each terminal). This lets us distinguish parser correctness from rendering correctness.

Analysis2026-04-06

Supported by 11 of 12 terminals (92%). Not supported by: vt100.js. Part of the Modern TUI baseline. Notes: vt100.js: DCH (delete characters) not implemented in vt100.js baseline emulator.

Supported by 12 of 14 backends (86%)

Terminal Applications

Terminal	Version	Support	Notes
iTerm2	3.6.9	✓ yes
Ghostty	1.3.1	✓ yes
VS Code		✓ yes
Warp		✓ yes
Cursor		✓ yes
Terminal.app		✓ yes

Headless Backends

Parser correctness only — a ✓ means the parser accepts the sequence.

Backend	Version	Support	Notes
Alacritty	0.26.0	✓ yes
Kitty	0.40.0	✓ yes
vterm	0.2.0	✓ yes
WezTerm	0.1.0-fork.5	✓ yes
xterm.js	5.5.0	✓ yes
vt100.js	0.2.1	✗ no	DCH (delete characters) not implemented in vt100.js baseline emulator

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