Question:
When I type in the RStudio's IDE's terminal, there are either missing characters or it is behaving differently than other open terminals.
Answer:
If one terminal gets into a bad state, but the others are working fine, running stty sane should fix it, presuming that the bad state is due to stty flags and not an actual product issue.
For example, here is an output of running stty -a from the RStudio IDE terminal:
$ speed 38400 baud; rows 9; columns 74; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
eol2 = <undef>; swtch = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z;
rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;
-parenb -parodd -cmspar cs8 -hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal -crtscts
-ignbrk brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr icrnl -ixon
-ixoff -iuclc -ixany imaxbel -iutf8
opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0
ff0
isig icanon iexten -echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop
-echoprt echoctl echoke
Notice the -echo in bold above, this was causing typed characters to not be displayed while interacting with the terminal. Using the stty sane command resets all of the flags for this terminal session and resolved the issue.