xterm tab key (temporarily) locks keyboard

[Frank Eske]

If the tab key is entered as the first character running the bash shell on
an xterm terminal, the keyboard temporarily locks. Control-C writes ^C but
doesn't unlock it. This doesn't happen on Fedora. It also doesn't lock if a
space is typed first.

This occurs whether or not the xterm console is in an X environment.

For some reason I seem to accidentally do this a lot more often than I'd
like, so it's a real nuisance. I checked this mailing list for the last
four months and couldn't find " tab" or a useful "tab ", I find it
difficult to believe that I'm the first to see this, so maybe there's
something I changed that's making this happen. Any advice on what that
might be?