🚀 go-pugleaf

Last night I was using emacs to edit a tex file at the console of a Sparc
and the behavior was rather bizarre. When I wanted to insert spaces using
the space bar, instead the character on which the cursor was resting would
be duplicated as many times as the space bar was pressed. This happened
at the beginning of lines particularly (I didn't experiment that much elsewhere).
I tried to sneak up on it from behind by going to the end of the previous
line and typing spaces, which was ok, then ^D to delete the newline and join
the two
lines, and then backed up to the beginning of the sequence of spaces and typed
a carriage return, but the spaces disappeared and instead I got some duplicatiion
of some characters on the next line (i.e. the line I started with).

I can't imagine what might have caused this behavior. I exited emacs and
reentered it and the same thing happened. I tried logging out, in
case something in the environment had been inadvertently set, and logged
back in and found the same thing. I think it is version 18.55 or maybe 18.54
of emacs.

Any idea what might be wrong or what I could do about it ?

Allan Adler
ara@lom1.math.yale.edu