Backspace doesn’t work in gvim 7.2 64-bit for Windows?

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Does it entirely not work, or does it just not backspace past where you went into insert mode? There’s an option backspace which controls this:

Influences the working of <BS>, <Del>, CTRL-W and CTRL-U in Insert
mode.  This is a list of items, separated by commas.  Each item allows
a way to backspace over something:
value       effect
indent      allow backspacing over autoindent
eol         allow backspacing over line breaks (join lines)
start       allow backspacing over the start of insert; CTRL-W and CTRL-U
            stop once at the start of insert.

owen_water’s suggestion is the same as Carpetsmoker’s comment, enabling all three of these. That’s generally what people want, since it’s a bit surprising to have Vim refuse to let you backspace text that’s right there. So take your pick of the two equivalent choices – I’d go with the more verbose and clear one:

set backspace=2
set backspace=indent,eol,start

In some cases, bad terminals can mess with backspace and delete, but I doubt that’s your problem in Windows. There is some ability to fix this; see :help fixdel.

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