I cannot find the setting that prevents deletion of an entire region when you have it highlighted and you hit backspace... (I just want it to delete one character even if a region is highlighted.) I already have
(delete-selection-mode 0)
and in custom-set-variables (I have cua-mode enabled for its rectangle functions),
'(cua-delete-selection nil)
but that is the behavior I get. Am I missing something?
Found it:
(setq delete-active-region nil)
is the answer. Thanks to all for toughing it out with me!
In ELisp, 0 is considered as true.
Try by setting
(setq delete-selection-mode nil)
As has been noted, cua-mode doesn't handle this nicely. The simplest way to retain that mode without this problem would seem to be to redefine the cua keymap (see cua--init-keymaps) after initialising the mode, to unbind the various delete keys from cua-delete-region:
(add-hook 'cua-mode-hook 'my-cua-mode-hook)
(defun my-cua-mode-hook ()
(define-key cua--region-keymap [remap delete-backward-char] 'delete-backward-char)
(define-key cua--region-keymap [remap backward-delete-char] 'backward-delete-char)
(define-key cua--region-keymap [remap backward-delete-char-untabify] 'backward-delete-char-untabify)
(define-key cua--region-keymap [remap delete-char] 'delete-char))